The presence of cultivated crops such as rice or volunteer vegetation, grown as food for crawfish in ponds, interferes with seines and requires that crawfish be harvested with small, baited traps over an extended period, beginning as early as mid-November and continuing through April or June.
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. 1
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Herbicides are necessary for obtaining optimum yield and maximum profit in the rice industry. Before the development of selective rice herbicides, weed control involved intensive hand labor. Combined with improved cultural and fertility practices and the development of high yielding varieties, selective herbicides have dramatically increased rice yields in the last 50 years.
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.
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.
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.