Roundup Flex: Treat it like regular Roundup Ready cotton now?

The Beltwide Cotton Conference, as you might expect, included plenty of data and comments about Roundup Ready cotton, especially the new Flex varieties that allow Roundup applications past the fifth node, the cutoff point for first-generation Roundup Ready varieties.

More than once, I heard Extension workers and even some crop consultants say that it will be far safer to treat Flex cotton the same as the first-gen varieties. Reasons include the need to hit weeds far earlier than cotton's fifth node to gain better control and reduce potential for more Roundup-resistant weed development. With many of the weed sessions focusing on Palmer pigweed -- and secondarily on marestail (horseweed) and things like Italian ryegrass -- resistance management or prevention was on everyone's mind, whether or not they now have the problem.

One estimate given was that Roundup Ready cotton, in general, had lost $19 per acre of its value for growers due to continued reissntance problems. That number was given by a university weed scientist during the consultants conference, which preceeded the Beltwide.

Roger Carter, a veteran crop consultant from east-central Louisiana, wrote in his Beltwide report on January 10:

"One focus was on the economic value of the cost of transgenics. Surveys of farmers and consultants indicated that the current charges for biotechnology, particularly the Flex charges, are much too high in exchange for the good we are getting. Because of resistance management more residual herbicides are needed than ever before. And more direct contact herbicides are necessary to battle resistant pigweeds and other species. Therefore, the use of glyphosate over the top after the 5th true leaf on cotton is a mute point in areas where we are using resistance management programs. And that should be most of the Cotton Belt. Are you listening, folks?"