ABSTRACT

West Texas in general has an aggressive management approach to early square feeding insects such as cotton fleahopper and lugus bug. It is thought that the area does not have enough time for the cotton plant to compensate for this early square loss. During the 2001 crop year, we conducted a study which did show that early square removal resulted in compensation, resulting in increased yields. The lint harvested from the 2001 study was ginned and the High Volume Instrumentation (HVI) fiber measures were used to calculate a loan rate and lint value per acre. In this study, lint weight and not fiber quality determined the economic value of compensation. Therefore, this data suggests that the current early season threshold for lygus and fleahoppers could be too aggressive.