Premium
Plant Spacings with Irrigated Cotton 1
Author(s) -
Smith C. Wayne,
Waddle B. A.,
Ramey H. H.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
agronomy journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.752
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1435-0645
pISSN - 0002-1962
DOI - 10.2134/agronj1979.00021962007100050035x
Subject(s) - lint , loam , cultivar , agronomy , irrigation , gossypium hirsutum , plant density , mathematics , yield (engineering) , biology , sowing , horticulture , soil water , physics , ecology , thermodynamics
The majority of research concerning stand density of cotton ( Gossypium hirsutum L.) was conducted several years ago under dryland conditions and deals primarily with lint yield and earliness of a single genotype. Therefore an experiment to compare three cultivars at three stand densities was initiated in 1975. ‘Quapaw’, ‘Rex 713’, and ‘Deltapine 16’ were grown in stand densities of one plant per 6.1, 10.2, and 30.5 cm, which corresponds to populations of 169,841, 101,573, and 33,969 plants/ha, respectively, A split plot design with cultivars as main treatments and stand densities as sub‐plots was utilized with furrow irrigation on a Grenada‐Calloway silt loam soil, a fine, silty, mixed, thermic alfisol. The cultivars differed in lint yield and boll and fiber properties as expected. Plants spaced 10.2 cm yielded significantly (P<0.05) more lint, 1,109 kg/ha, than plants growing 6.1 cm apart and yielding 954 kg/ha, but did not differ from the wider spacing, which yielded 1,031 kg lint/ha. The low stand density caused significantly later maturity; while the high stand density (6.1 cm spacing) resulted in significantly lower lint percentage and smaller bolls. Fiber elongation was the only character measured in which a significant interaction of density ✕ cultivar was found. Cotton in central east Arkansas under irrigation should be grown approximately 10.2 cm apart in 96.5 cm rows (101,573 plants/ha). Based on these data, plant genotype does not affect plant response to stand density.