Commercial cow-calf production is the primary beef cattle enterprise in Louisiana. The state has about 550,000 beef cows in 15,000 herds located in all parishes but Orleans. The primary product marketed from these herds is the weaned calf. At least 80 percent of the cow-calf herds in Louisiana use crossbred cows of one kind or another, and most of these crossbred cows have some Brahman inheritance.

Cotton farmers may soon have a new way to evaluate the effectiveness of one class of insecticides, thanks to a new LSU AgCenter procedure that received a U.S. patent.

Vol. 44, No. 3

Vol. 44, No. 4 Sugarcane

Beef and dairy producers in north Louisiana plant more than 30,000 acres of hill land to annual ryegrass each fall for grazing cattle during the winter and spring. Nitrogen is the most limiting plant nutrient required for annual ryegrass production on these sandy Coastal Plain soils.

The commercial release of Bollgard cotton in 1996 gave cotton growers a new pest management tool. Bollgard cotton, a transgenic product, includes a gene from a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis. This transferred gene enables the plant to produce a toxin that provides significant control of the tobacco budworm, Heliothis virescens, and the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, while being safe for humans, other animals and the environment.

Vol. 44, No. 2 Urban Agriculture

Vol. 44, No. 1

Root-knot nematodes cause significant yield losses in many horticultural crops. Double-cropping cantaloupes with a nematode-resistant tomato can improve cantaloupe yields in soils that have a history of root-knot nematode.

Alligators and fashion may bring different images to mind, but the combination offers potential for Louisiana’s economy. A research initiative to explore ways to increase domestic demand for finished products made with American alligator leather began in 1997. The goal is to find more opportunities for Louisiana’s alligator business.

Stephen A. Harrison, James R. Fuxa and the Experiment Station's Sugarcane Breeding and Variety Development Team won the top research awards presented as the LSU AgCenter's Annual Conference Dec. 11 and 12, 2000.

The LSU AgCenter has released three new peach varieties, which will be available commercially in the fall of 2001. Their names match their characteristics somewhat, says Charlie Johnson, horticulture researcher and developer of the varieties. LaSweet is low-acid and very sweet. LaRouge has a bright red skin. And LaBelle is a late-season peach that will extend Louisiana’s fresh peach season into mid-July.

Nematode parasites make a big difference in the appetite of beef cattle and thus their weight gain. Left to right are four of the paddocks used in nematode research at the LSU AgCenter’s Dean Lee Research Station near Alexandria. The road about a third of the way from the top serves as one border, and the tree line at the bottom is another border.

Discovery of new postemergence grass herbicides (graminicides) in the late 1970s and early 1980s gave producers a highly effective means for over-the-top control of most annual grasses and perennial grasses, such as johnsongrass, in cotton and soybean fields. Continued reliance on these herbicides has brought about increased selection pressure for resistant populations.

Insects that eat soybean leaves, such as the soybean looper, velvetbean caterpillar and green cloverworm, usually attack in late August and September. Because determination of economic threshholds for each specific stage of seed filling is difficult, an alternative approach based on light interception was investigated.

In 1887, a group of sugarcane growers known as the Louisiana Planters Association set up a research facility in Audubon Park in New Orleans so they could learn more about the granulation process. This was the beginning of the Audubon Sugar Institute. C.W. Stubbs, a professor of agriculture, became the first director of the station. A classroom building in the LSU Quadrangle is named in his honor.

In Louisiana and other catfish-producing states, most growers focus on the production of market-ready fish and purchase fingerling catfish to restock their production ponds from a smaller number of farmers who specialize in fingerling production. In Louisiana, fewer than 20 fingerling producers satisfy the annual seed stock requirements for the state’s catfish industry.

New sugarcane varieties are the lifeblood of the Louisiana sugar industry. In fact, the high and the low points of the Louisiana sugar industry closely parallel those of sugarcane variety development. The first sugarcane varieties grown in Louisiana were of foreign origin. Introduced varieties were typically renamed and included “Creole,” from which Etienne De Bore first granulated sugar, “Otaheite,” and later “Louisiana Striped” and “Louisiana Purple.”

Formosan subterranean termites have proved to be one of the most formidable pests ever to invade Louisiana. They are here to stay. But the LSU AgCenter is taking a three-pronged approach to stem their spread.