Runnels County Cotton Field Day Slated For Sept. 23

Sep 18, 2015

By Steve Byrns

The Runnels County Cotton Field Day conducted by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service is set for Sept. 23.

Garrett Cline, AgriLife Extension agent in Runnels County, said the result demonstration portion of the field day will be from 9-10:30 a.m. on the Paul Minzenmayer farm on County Road 303 near Poe’s Corner at the intersection of Farm-to-Market Roads 2111, 384 and State Highway 153 near Winters.

The tour will relocate to the Winters Community Center at 410 Novice Road in Winters at 10:45 a.m. for the remainder of the program and lunch. Adjournment is set for 1 p.m.

“Our topics will include a number of cotton variety test plots and their results, weed management in cotton, current Texas Department of Agriculture laws and regulations, and a brief program on wheat and small grains,” Cline said.

There will be no charge for the day’s activities and accompanying lunch, but an RSVP is requested by Sept. 21 for an accurate meal count. For more information or to RSVP, call the AgriLife Extension office in Runnels County at 325-365-5042.

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Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.