Every year in North Carolina brings its share of challenges, and 2025 was no different. Beginning in late April through early May, planting conditions were nearly ideal in terms of temperatures, and a noticeable proportion of our acreage was planted during that time. Rains and cooler temperatures returned during mid May and continued intermittently throughout the remainder of our planting window. As a result, another noticeable proportion of our acreage was planted just prior to the May 25^th crop insurance deadline. There was little to no economic incentive to continue planting beyond our crop insurance deadlines this year, and some acres were lost to poor stands and seedling diseases that would typically necessitate replanting. However this year, those acres were replanted to beans in most cases.

June brought warmer temperatures and fairly timely rains that continued into July. There was a considerable hot and dry period towards the end of July, which made us nervous, however rains came to most areas at the last minute to carry us through mid August. Dry weather returned by mid August, along with abnormally cool weather, which continued into and throughout September and October. Only a few spotty rains occurred during late September and October, which was too late to effectively add yield potential to the crop. Depending on severity of drought stress beginning in mid August, a top crop was not formed in some parts of the state, whereas one was surprisingly present in areas with heavier soils that retained moisture for a little longer given the cooler weather that prevailed. A rain or two during late August could’ve certainly added a great deal of yield to our crop, however yields were stronger than expected in many parts of the state (1200-1500 lbs/A), whereas other parts observed moderate yields that were expected from the dry weather (800-1050 lbs/A). Although some yield potential was lost to dry weather, those same conditions allowed us to avoid some widespread hardlock issues that typically occur in September, therefore more of our crop was retained and harvestable than normal. Defoliation and harvest seemed slightly slower than normal, so we’re thankful for the cooperative harvest weather for the most part. Despite the current economic environment for cotton, we thankfully made respectable yields across most of the state, which is a testament to the varieties we now commonly grow.

Thanks to our stellar cooperating growers and county agents, we were able to successfully complete another year of the North Carolina On-Farm Cotton Variety Evaluation Program. Additionally, this program was once again a huge success in 2025, thanks to the substantial support from the NC Cotton Producers Association, N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, NC State University, our Seed Companies, TAMA, and Cotton Incorporated. The support and contributions of all involved are much appreciated, and will have significant impact on our growers’ bottom line as we look forward to a hopefully more prosperous 2026 season.

As in years past, this on-farm program consisted of the most widely-adapted and best-fit varieties for North Carolina cotton growers as determined by our leading seed companies. It is always advised that variety decisions be based on multi-environment and multi-year replicated data in order to identify varieties with a high degree of stability (strong performance across a wide range of environmental conditions and years). As a standard practice, it is always wise for growers to choose several varieties and position those varieties in environments where they are likely to perform competitively. It is also advised that growers observe data from both the on-farm program and NC State University Official Variety Trials (OVT) which will be available very soon. Both programs serve as platforms for effective evaluation of variety performance but are different in several regards. One of the primary strengths of the on-farm program is the vast number of environments that are effectively captured in a given season. However, OVT can accommodate many more varieties than we can effectively evaluate in an on-farm trial, and many of our seed companies have several competitive varieties (including brand new, recently released varieties) available for North Carolina producers, many of which are evaluated in OVT. Together, the On-Farm and OVT programs collectively offer growers a complete platform for making variety decisions.

Within the 11th year of this program alone, the on-farm program again has clearly demonstrated that variety selection is one of the most important decisions a grower can make that will significantly impact their profitability in a given year. Depending on the degree of variety selection error, the 2025 on-farm trials clearly illustrated that producers could lose an average of $117 per acre due to improper variety selection alone!! Keep in mind, that these figures are based on performance of the best varieties from each brand, and relatively low current cotton prices, therefore a producer could do much worse than this by potentially choosing a less competitive variety.

Variety performance information will be discussed in much greater detail during the upcoming winter meetings (look for meeting dates/locations for your county at your local N.C. Cooperative Extension office or on the NC State University Cotton Portal under Events (meeting dates and locations are already listed). Additionally, your local county agent is an excellent resource for variety selection, so please contact them for your local trial results and they will be happy to share those results with you. Additionally, the NC Cotton Variety Performance Calculator, launched in early 2016, is an excellent resource for growers to use to make customized variety comparisons based on geographical region, yield environment, years or multi-years, and trial type. The calculator has been recently updated with lint yields for the 2025 On-Farm trials, with OVT and fiber quality data soon to follow.

The slides below offers a very general summary of variety performance across the state. Variety performance data will be dissected in much greater detail during the upcoming winter meetings. This year, as always, growers should focus more on factors such as stability characteristics, versus focusing on the overall variety ranking of single-year data alone. There are several ways to approach and observe 2025 variety performance data, and this will be explained thoroughly during meeting season. During 2025, variety performance varied rather wildly from trial to trial, and there were noticeable differences in variety performance across planting dates, which is a rare occurrence for us. Therefore, growers might want to hold off on making any definite variety decisions until these various approaches can be discussed thoroughly during winter meetings. However, the slides below can be used as a very general summary for now.

Yield Results for the 2025 NC On-Farm Cotton Variety Evaluation Program

In these slides, varieties are ranked in descending order according to average yield across all trials in each analysis. Varieties with yields highlighted in green indicate that yields were above average across all locations. The percentage of trials in which a variety was the highest yielder, within the top 2, within the top 3, and most importantly, within the statistically highest yielding group are also shown. As mentioned earlier, individual trial results can be obtained from your local county agent and in the variety calculator. Results for OVT will also be available soon. Again, growers are also encouraged however to observe multi-location and multi-year data before making variety decisions. Due to the clear variation in performance between trials and years, it is not wise to base variety decisions on results from a single trial or even a small number of trials.

We want to reiterate our appreciation to all of our leadership organizations (NC Cotton Producers Association, NCDA&CS, NC State, Cotton Inc.), TAMA, and our Seed Companies for their efforts and support in this program for the benefit of all North Carolina cotton growers. We also appreciate the diligence and hard work that our county agents, consultants, and cooperating growers put into this program during 2025. This program was a success again in 2025, in its 11th year, due to the efforts of all involved and we look forward to another year of this program in 2026! Hopefully 2026 will bring us some better cotton prices too!