G'day
I hope 2026 is kind to you and your families.
We are now into the second half of the season, approaching the end of January, which traditionally means cut-out, in order to set crops up for a timely picking.
The season to date has presented a range of challenges, including a difficult 6 weeks from mid-October through November. Water remains a challenge for some growers. Given crops range from 17 nodes through to 22 nodes and with significant differences in crop biomass, a wide range of yield outcomes can be expected.
General thinking on yields is a range from 7-8 bales/ha, up to 13-14 bales/ha.
This variability in expected yield outcomes demands specific strategies. Firstly, as yield potential is currently being set (flowering), water demand is paramount to avoid yield decline. It would make sense to give all crops this opportunity to maximise yield potential as there is always the chance of getting a storm in the back end of February.
Beyond that happening, saving or gaining a bale still exceeds the cost of 0.7 or 0.8 ML to finish watering the crop in late Febuary/early March.
Some tough decisions will need to be made in the next 3-4 weeks. Well worth the time to go through every field with your Agronomist/Consultant to work out water demand and test the economics of buying water if you are facing a shortfall.
For those of you using CottonTracka, adding boll counts now will give you a yield estimate and let you gauge how your water decisions are affecting the crop. This estimate will be a useful adjunct to your own estimates and help add some clarity to your decision making.
In addition, the link below will take you to a useful video, presented by Michael Bange and James Quinn, which discusses strategies to manage crops in water constrained seasons.
