Beginning in 1996, the California BASIC Management Team has been testing and disseminating innovative ideas in cotton pesticide use reduction and organic production of cotton in the northern San Joaquin Valley of California. The team does this through an organized outreach program to enrolled growers. The team is made up of cotton farmers, pest control advisors, agronomists, and researchers interested in novel production approaches. Team researchers document field-level efficacy and suitability of alternative insect management options in the cotton production system by monitoring field management techniques that significantly reduce or eliminate agrochemical use. We summarize here three years of yield and arthropod abundance data relevant to the performance of BASIC-enrolled fields.

During the past three years, we have monitored multiple fields in the BASIC program. BASIC growers use various pesticide use-reduction techniques including: natural enemy introduction and conservation for biologically based management of arthropod pests; flame and mechanical weeding as a non chemical weed control method; and use of organic acids as alternatives to conventional defoliants. Each year we have also analyzed production parameters including: yield, fiber quality, pesticide use, economics, and energy use, comparing these with those of conventional cotton production. A subset of enrolled BASIC fields are managed using organic techniques, and separate analyses of these fields has been done. In 1996, yields in BASIC fields were significantly lower than in conventionally-managed fields, but organic yields did not differ from conventional yields. In 1997 yields in organic BASIC were lower than conventional yields, but yields from non-organic BASIC fields were the same as conventional yields. In 1998 ( a low-yield year due to cool weather during stand establishment and early plant development), yields in both organic and non-organic BASIC fields were significantly lower than those in conventionally-managed fields. Key pest outbreaks in BASIC and organic fields have not been a production problem in any of the three years. Although BASIC fields periodically show higher abundance of mites and lygus bugs, retention data has indicated no increased shedding of squares or bolls. Plant density differences, late planting dates (in 1996 and 1998), and an unusually early cutout (in 1997) may have contributed to observed yield differences. In an evaluation of a subsample of non-organic BASIC fields adjacent to alfalfa fields and conventional control fields with no adjacent alfalfa, we could not detect significant differences in abundance of lygus bugs or predacious natural enemies.