Released March 6, 2008
DAVIS, Calif. -- With unpredictable weather nationwide, it is especially important to know when to plant crops to produce the highest yield. If farmers delay planting, hoping for better weather, they risk losing time to produce a good crop. If they plant too early, they might get higher yields, but they risk cold weather damage to their crops and the cost of replanting.
Cotton growers can use the planting forecast tool found on the University of California integrated pest management Web site at http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/WEATHER to help California's San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento Valley cotton growers determine suitable weather to plant cotton and avoid chilling injury to emerging cotton seedlings. The five-day heat unit forecast should be used with a grower's soil temperature measurements to ensure that conditions are suitable for rapid emergence.
In 1997, UC IPM began posting the weather forecasts online each day during cotton-planting season. The observed lows for the morning (as reported for Fresno, Bakersfield and Chico) are used as the minimum temperatures for the first day of the period. The page is updated each day from about March 4 through May 7 every year.
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http://news.ucanr.org/newsstorymain.cfm?story=1076#Three
Contact: Stephanie Klunk, (530) 754-6724, sjklunk@ucdavis.edu
