Texas

Texas Cooperative Extension's annual cotton field day in the Lower Rio Grande Valley has been postponed during the week of July 18 as the agricultural community braced for Hurricane Emily. Even without a direct hit, the storms's high winds and heavy rains could cause major problems for growers.

"This is one of those rare times of the year when there aren't too many vegetable crops out in the field," said Dr. Bob Wiedenfeld, soils scientist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. "We're between spring vegetable harvest and the planting of fall crops, but we still have lots of cotton, sugarcane and citrus out there."

The majority of the area's estimated 170,000 acres of cotton is not ready to be harvested, even though the crop's maturity is about two weeks ahead of schedule, thanks to an especially hot, dry growing season this year.

"Some harvesting had begun, but with defoliation already under way and harvest coming up soon, we sure didn't need any tropical rain activity to threaten open cotton bolls," said Dr. Enrique Perez, the Extension agent in Cameron County.

Tropical rainfall this late in the cotton season could decrease the value of lint, and heavy rains can render a crop worthless if bolls are knocked to the ground, he said.

Cotton acreage is less than in previous years due to growers' uncertainty over the area's new boll weevil eradication program. Perez estimates a 20 percent decrease from last year's 207,000 acres.

Citrus and sugarcane are in the process of maturing toward fall and winter harvests, but neither can tolerate the long periods of standing water Emily might bring.

"Standing water for too long depletes soil of the oxygen sugarcane needs to survive," said Dr. Jorge Da Silva, sugarcane breeder at the Texas A&M University System Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Weslaco.

"High winds could knock sugarcane stalks to the ground," he said. "Even if harvesters could pick up the lodged stalks, it would mean carrying a lot of dirt to the sugar mill. That causes major problems for the mill's machinery. Overall, sugar extraction would be severely diminished."

Standing water is also bad news for the area's citrus trees, said Dr. John Da Graca, deputy director of the Texas A&M-Kingsville Citrus Center at Weslaco.

"We're hoping standing water drains off quickly," he said. "If it stands too long, oxygen is excluded from the soil. It harms the roots and promotes root fungus, which could lead to tree death."

Da Graca said depending on wind strength of the storm, fruit could be knocked from trees.

"Fortunately, it's early in the citrus season and fruit is not yet at maximum size, so I expect more fruit to stay on the trees than not," he said.

Wiedenfeld said the four-county area of the Valley has received little rainfall this year, which could turn out to be a blessing.

"We've only had about 3 inches of rain so far this year, so the ground is very dry and can absorb more rainfall," he said.

Manda Cattaneo, the cotton Integrated Pest Management entomologist at the Weslaco research and Extension facilities, said the cotton field day could be rescheduled.

"We will evaluate field conditions after the passing of Hurricane Emily and make a decision then," she said.

Date: 7/21/05