Cotton In Alabama Research Articles

Diversity of Oomycetes From Alabama Cotton Soils Using Culture-Independent Methods.

Seedling disease management recommendations rely on comprehensive identification of the pathogens. A recent manuscript isolated oomycetes from diseased cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) roots to identify the species associated. However, culture-dependent surveys may miss species because of the microbiological medium and work required to isolate and maintain all cultured organisms. Alternatively, culture-independent methods using PCR amplification and high-throughput sequencing can identify species' presence and relative abundance, including obligate pathogens and rare members of communities. We used culture-independent sequencing from the same cotton soils in the culture-based survey to determine the oomycete species in oomycete-containing soils. The results of the two methods were generally similar regarding the species identified. Similarly to the culture-based method, Globisporangium irregular accounted for 24% of the relative abundance and was encountered in all fields sequenced. In contrast, we identified three operational taxonomic units matching Globisporangium ultimum, but accounted for less than 0.06% of total relative abundance, potentially explaining why it was not isolated from cotton roots in the original survey. Phytophthora nicotianae was identified in soils but not at the concentrations recorded in the culture-based study. The results of this study, combined with the results of the culture-based survey, demonstrate the most comprehensive identification of oomycetes associated with cotton in the cotton belt and the oomycetes related to seedling disease. The combined results will be essential for future research into the specific pathogen species mentioned and stimulate similar research in other states.

Characterizing the Diversity of Oomycetes Associated with Diseased Cotton Seedlings in Alabama.

Many oomycete species are associated with the seedlings of crops, including upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.), which leads to annual threats. The diversity of oomycete species in Alabama needs to be better understood since the last survey of oomycetes associated with cotton in Alabama was 20 years ago-before significant updates to taxonomy and improvements in identification of oomycetes using molecular tools. Our current study aimed to identify oomycetes associated with Alabama cotton seedlings, correlate diversity with soil edaphic factors, and assess virulence toward cotton seed. Thirty symptomatic cotton seedlings were collected independently from 25 fields in 2021 and 2022 2 to 4 weeks after planting. Oomycetes were isolated by plating root sections onto a semiselective medium. The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region was sequenced to identify the resulting isolates. A seed virulence assay was conducted in vitro to verify pathogenicity, and 347 oomycete isolates were obtained representing 36 species. Northern Alabama soils had the richest oomycete communities and a greater silt and clay concentration than sandier soils in the central and southern coastal plains. Globisporangium irregulare and Phytophthora nicotianae were consistently recovered from cotton roots in both years. Globisporangium irregulare was pathogenic and recovered from all Alabama regions, whereas P. nicotianae was pathogenic but recovered primarily in areas with lower sand content in northern Alabama. Many oomycete species have not been previously reported in Alabama or the southeastern United States. Altogether, this knowledge will help facilitate effective management strategies for cotton seedling diseases caused by oomycetes in Alabama and the United States.

Evalution of insecticides to manage tarnished plant bug in north Alabama cotton, 2021

Evalution of insecticides to manage tarnished plant bug in north Alabama cotton, 2021

Evaluation of at-plant insecticides for control of thrips in North Alabama cotton, 2021

Evaluation of at-plant insecticides for control of thrips in North Alabama cotton, 2021

Evaluation of insecticides to reduce thrips injury in central Alabama cotton, 2021

Evaluation of insecticides to reduce thrips injury in central Alabama cotton, 2021

Evaluation of insecticides for management of bollworms in North Alabama Cotton, 2021

Evaluation of insecticides for management of bollworms in North Alabama Cotton, 2021

Evaluation of At-Plant Insecticides for Control of Thrips in Central Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of At-Plant Insecticides for Control of Thrips in Central Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of Insecticides to Reduce Tarnished Plant Bug Damage in North Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of Insecticides to Reduce Tarnished Plant Bug Damage in North Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of At-Plant Insecticides for Control of Thrips in North Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of At-Plant Insecticides for Control of Thrips in North Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of Insecticide for Control of Tarnished Plant Bugs in North Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of Insecticide for Control of Tarnished Plant Bugs in North Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of Insecticides for Control of Stink Bugs in Central Alabama Cotton, 2020

Evaluation of Insecticides for Control of Stink Bugs in Central Alabama Cotton, 2020

First Report of Cotton leafroll dwarf virus Associated with Cotton Blue Disease Symptoms in Alabama

During 2017, virus-like symptoms were observed in cotton fields in six counties in coastal Alabama infested by the whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Genn.) and cotton aphid Aphis gossypii (Glover). Symptoms consisted of foliar distortion, curling, rolling, bluish-green discoloration, vein-clearing, shortened internodes that resulted in dwarfing of plants, and reduced boll set. Disease incidence ranged from 3 to 30% per field, resulting in approximately 560 kg/ha loss, and affecting 25% of the 50,585-ha cotton crop in Alabama, with a loss of approximately 50,000 bales valued at $19 million dollars. Leaves were collected from symptomatic cotton plants, Gossypium hirsutum L., in Barbour County, AL, during late August and mid-September 2017. Total DNA and RNA were purified and subjected to DNA and RNAseq Illumina Hi-Seq 2500 (paired-end reads, 150-bp) shotgun sequencing. The de novo-assembled DNA contigs yielded no match to viral sequences available in the GenBank database. However, one RNA de novo assembled contig (103 reads) of 1,143 bp (accession no. MK015625), located at nucleotide coordinates 3,830 to 4,972, was annotated as Cotton leafroll dwarf virus (CLRDV) “atypical isolate” from Argentina (KF359947), based on 97.1% similarity and 98% coverage (BLASTn, GenBank). The CLRDV belongs to the genus Polerovirus (family Luteoviridae), which are aphid-transmitted, positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses with a genome size of approximately 5.8 kb (Distefano et al. 2010). To verify the Illumina results, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primer pair AL674F-5′-CCGTAGCGGTCATCGTCTTT/AL1407R-5′-TAACCCTGACACAGTGGGGA was designed based on a region conserved in all six available CLRDV genome sequences (GenBank accession nos. GU167940, HQ827780, KF359946, KF359947, KF906260, and KF906261) and was used in parallel with the primers CLRDV3675F and Pol3982R (Sharman et al. 2015) for reverse transcription PCR amplification of total RNA purified from symptomatic cotton plants (n = 3). An amplicon of the expected size was obtained using the primers, AL674F/1407R and CLRDV3675F/Pol3982R, at 733 bp (accession no. MH883237) and 310 bp (accession no. MH883236) in size, respectively. Bidirectional Sanger sequencing confirmed CLRDV presence, based on the BLASTn score of 94 and 99% similarity for the AL674F/1407R and CLRDV3675F/Pol3982R amplicon sequence, having a closest match to CLRDV from South America (GU167940 and KF906261, respectively). Pairwise distance analysis (Muhire et al. 2014) of the CLRDV fragments from Alabama cotton plants with the analogous genome fragment from the six available CLRDV isolates from South America indicated 91.5 to 99.3% nt sequence identity, suggesting the U.S. isolate is closely related, but not identical, to previously reported CLRDV isolates. The CLRDV, endemic to Africa and/or Asia-Pacific (Ray et al. 2016), was introduced into Brazil and Argentina during 2005 and 2010, respectively (Correa et al. 2005; Distefano et al. 2010). Although A. gossypii is the only known CLRDV vector, and it was prevalent in symptomatic cotton fields during 2017, aphid transmissibility of the Alabama isolate has not been verified. Whether the CLRDV becomes established and causes economic losses to the U.S. cotton crop remains to be determined. To our knowledge, this is the first detection of the exotic CLRDV in U.S. cotton plantings.

Determination of evapotranspiration for cotton in Alabama by the Penman method

Cotton irrigation is increasingly becoming a challenge because of climate change effects such as the variations in rainfall, temperature, and cloudiness during the growing season. Cotton crop characteristics, as well as the prevailing environmental conditions, are critical in determining cotton water use. An efficient method of scheduling irrigation to cotton crop is imperative for optimising time and amount of water to apply for achieving cotton yield potential. In this article, a reliable approach to determine crop water requirement for cotton cultivation is proposed using the Penman method for Gadsden, Alabama, located in the southern part of the USA.

Determination of evapotranspiration for cotton in Alabama by the Penman method

Cotton irrigation is increasingly becoming a challenge because of climate change effects such as the variations in rainfall, temperature, and cloudiness during the growing season. Cotton crop characteristics, as well as the prevailing environmental conditions, are critical in determining cotton water use. An efficient method of scheduling irrigation to cotton crop is imperative for optimising time and amount of water to apply for achieving cotton yield potential. In this article, a reliable approach to determine crop water requirement for cotton cultivation is proposed using the Penman method for Gadsden, Alabama, located in the southern part of the USA.

Icons of Depression

Icons of Depression Alix Beeston (bio) One especially striking image included in walker Evans's American Photographs, the photographic book published by the Museum of Modern Art to accompany a retrospective of Evans's work in the fall of 1938, foregrounds the terms of its representation of life in the United States during the Depression. Depicting a found object in a shallow picture plane, “Torn Movie Poster, 1930” (Figure 1) aligns the flat surface of a Hollywood film poster with the flat surface of the photographic image. Evans typically employs a head-on viewing angle and stark but unobtrusive frontal lighting in his photographs, which are, in turn, conceived as unsentimental, unmotivated objects. But “Torn Movie Poster” recasts this notion of his “bare-faced” aesthetic—to borrow a description from the essay that the writer and art critic Lincoln Kirstein contributed to the 1938 book (198). Evans confers mystery upon the original poster image by the framing of this photograph in American Photographs. Extricated from its spatial, geographical, and commercial contexts, the poster's dramatic substance is redirected, transposing the question of what, exactly, so terrifies the woman in the image into a metatextual key. Since each photograph in the book is positioned on the recto page, with the verso side left blank but for the relevant plate number, the woman's startled gaze appears to be directed at the photographic frame itself: the clean expanse of white space that faces and encases the woman. Through an austere, minimalistic poetics of negation, Evans visualizes the limits of his photographed nation. Evans's image of the Hollywood movie poster is at pains to disclose its own status as an image. It depicts a woman who is already playing a role, whose pose of white, middle-class femininity is as contrived and hyperbolic as her stance of panicked victimhood in the poster. The woman is both scared and scarred, her apparent vulnerability to the damages of the photographic frame—and of the Hollywood typology of the innocent white female victim—ingrained in the corrugated surface of the poster. Resembling both falling tears and lacerations, the rippled [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Walker Evans, “Torn Movie Poster, 1930.” © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art. Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New York [End Page 2] creases on the faces of the couple supplement the large rip in the poster that slashes open the woman's forehead. Since the surface of the poster and the surface of the image are collapsed into each other, these textual traces of dilapidation signify as the wounds of representation itself. The deep gorge in the woman's face produces a “beautiful convulsion” of the real that Rosalind Krauss identifies in surrealist photography in the 1920s and 1930s (“Photography” 35).1 Its chaotic, foliated layering of rips and tears are the signs of signification. “Torn Movie Poster” offers a means for re-conceptualizing one of the archetypal images of the Great Depression: the portrait in American Photographs with the caption, “Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife, 1936” (Figure 2). This portrait is a slight variation on the iconic photograph of Allie Mae Burroughs, the wife of a tenant farmer featured under the pseudonym Annie Mae Gudger in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the 1941 documentary book in which Evans collaborated with the writer James Agee (Figure 3). In the sequence of American Photographs, the woman in the movie poster is cordoned off from but still proximate to “Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer Wife,” which appears immediately after “Torn Movie Poster,” as well as a range of other female figures. In this sense, in symbolizing the wounds of representation, the weathered, marred surface of the movie poster also registers the emplacement of the Hollywood icon as an image in series with other images. A detailed reading of American Photographs—particularly its serial figurations of the white woman—demonstrates its status as an indispensable precursor to Agee and Evans's 1941 documentary work. Indeed, Agee completed the major revisions of his 400-page contribution to Praise in 1939, as the generally positive reviews of Evans's...

First Report of Verticillium dahliae on Cotton in Alabama

First Report of <i>Verticillium dahliae</i> on Cotton in Alabama

Winning Friends and Influencing Dead People

Winning Friends and Influencing Dead People JL Strickland (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Sitting up with the dead. Back when the dearly departed were routinely brought home for the wake, the protocol required that someone, usually male friends or relatives, sit up all night with the coffin after the visitors left so the deceased was not left alone while the grieving family slept. Flower-draped casket, Mississippi, glass negative, ca. 1930, Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress. [End Page 100] When young men of my generation were asked to be pallbearers at a funeral, they knew they had been accepted into the ranks of southern manhood. An even higher masculine honor was an invitation to “sit-up with the dead.” Back when the dearly departed were routinely brought home for the wake, the protocol required that someone, usually male friends or relatives, sit up all night with the coffin after the visitors left so the deceased was not left alone while the grieving family slept. These episodes were not so much a time of mourning as they were a chance for men to talk and gossip into the wee hours. Men love to gab as much as women but need hunting campfires, or fishing trips, or other macho pretenses to partake of this pleasure. An older relative, Vernon, who passed away in the Sixties, was the last person I knew who was brought home when he died. His wife Della asked if I would sit up with Vernon’s corpse, and I agreed. Following the prescribed ritual, she scheduled two-man teams of Vernon’s friends and relatives to take four-hour shifts through the cold February night. I and one of Vernon’s chums, Joe, were scheduled for the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. slot. I was not acquainted with Joe, who was described as Vernon’s best friend from their rambling single years. According to Della, Vernon and Joe had been “running buddies.” Vernon and Della lived in a mill village house a block from the east Alabama cotton mill where he had worked. When I arrived at two, the four-room house was dark, save for a dim lamp in the front room where Vernon was on display, snug in his gray metal casket. He was flanked by a few sparse funeral wreaths, the furniture in the room had been moved against the wall, and a row of six folding metal chairs from the funeral home was lined up in front of him. As I had climbed the steps, Vernon’s old pal Joe was standing under the feeble yellow porch light, stomping his feet trying to stay warm. He was smoking a cigar, bundled from the cold in a heavy overcoat, wearing a grey Stetson hat, and emanating pungent vapors of cheap bourbon—a real bona fide dirt-road sport. After relieving the two sitters who had been there for the previous four hours, and paying our respects to Vernon, Joe and I pulled our chairs close to the hissing gas space heater and got acquainted. He never removed his overcoat and hat. (This was decades before global warming. On that particularly frigid winter’s night, I’m sure even a young Al Gore was turning up the thermostat.) Joe turned out to be a gregarious fellow, and full of hilarious tales relating to his and Vernon’s rambunctious younger days. His stories were punctuated by deep gurgling swigs from a pint of bourbon pulled from inside his overcoat and blue puffs from his acrid stogy. As the hours moved along, Joe’s beefy face got redder [End Page 101] and his voice got louder. When making a point, he would look in the direction of the coffin and, laughing raucously, yell, “Ain’t that right, Vern?” Joe was on his second pint of Johnny Drum when the subject turned to Vernon’s wife Della. Joe became wistful and said that Della had been his first love, and, by all rights, should have been his, not Vernon’s. Suddenly, leaping to his feet, he staggered over to Vernon’s coffin and began cursing. “Vern, you blankety-blankety old so-and-so...

First Report of Corynespora cassiicola-Incited Target Spot on Cotton in Alabama.

Target spot symptoms were first observed on dryland and irrigated cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) statewide in Alabama in 2011. Leaf spots first appeared in the lower canopy and spread upward through the canopy toward the shoot tips. Individual leaf spots were roughly circular, formed concentric rings of alternating light and dark brown bands, and were up to 10 mm in diameter. Leaves with multiple lesions senesced prematurely. In 2012, target spot symptoms were observed as early as 68 days after planting in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. The possible combination of early disease onset and frequent showers/irrigation triggered rapid premature defoliation in some fields in excess of 75% in susceptible cultivars (Phytogen 499). Estimated yield losses in select cultivars (Deltapine 1050 and Phytogen 499) exceeded 336 kg/ha seed cotton. In 2012, symptomatic leaves were obtained from two separate locations in Alabama (Baldwin and Tallapoosa counties). The fungus was isolated from lesions by single spores plated on antibiotic V8 agar (1) and incubated at 21°C for 2 weeks under 12-h light cycles. Conidiophores arising from the gray, flocculose colonies were simple, erect, cylindrical, brown or olivaceous, unbranched, with two to seven septa. Conidia were borne singly, ranging from subhyaline to olivaceous, obclavate to cylindrical, straight to slightly curved, contained 4 to 15 pseudosepta, and were 50 to 209 μm long and 7 to 15 μm wide. These characteristics were consistent with the original description of Corynespora cassiicola on cotton (2). The internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) of two isolates, one representing each location, was amplified using primers 2234c and 3126t targeting a 550-bp region of the ITS1, 5.8S rRNA gene, and ITS2 (3). Sequences revealed 99% similarity to C. cassiicola in NCBI (Accession Nos. AY238606 and JQ717069). In greenhouse pathogenicity tests, 10 cotton seedlings (Phytogen 499) were inoculated by spraying a fungal suspension (2 × 104 spores/ml) of each of the two isolates prepared from 2-week-old cultures until runoff. Controls were inoculated with sterile water. Cotton seedlings were incubated in a moist chamber at 21°C for 72 h. All plants inoculated with the fungus developed leaf spot symptoms in 6 days. The fungus was reisolated from five inoculated plants. DNA was extracted from each isolate, amplified using primer pair 2234c/3126t, and sequenced. Sequences (550-bp) from all isolates shared 99% similarity to other C. cassiicola sequences in GenBank (Accession Nos. AY238606 and JQ717069). Nucleotide sequence data reported are available in GenBank under Accession Nos. KC544017 to 23. This pathogen has been reported previously to be economically important on a number of other hosts. To our knowledge, this is the first report of C. cassiicola on cotton in Alabama. Given the increasing prevalence of this disease in Alabama, its confirmation is a significant step toward developing management recommendations for growers.

A Nation of Gamblers: Real Estate Speculation and American History

The great housing convulsion that buffeted America between 2000 and 2010 has historical precedents, from the frontier land boom of the 1790s to the skyscraper craze of the 1920s. But this time was different. There was far less real uncertainty about fundamental economic and geographic trends, making the convulsion even more puzzling. During historic and recent booms, sensible models could justify high prices on the basis of seemingly reasonable projections about stable or growing prices. The recurring error appears to be a failure to anticipate the impact that elastic supply will eventually have on prices, whether for cotton in Alabama in 1820 or land in Las Vegas in 2006. Buyers don't appear to be irrational but rather cognitively limited investors who work with simple heuristic models, instead of a comprehensive general equilibrium framework. Low interest rates rarely seem to drive price growth; underpriced default options are a more common contributor to high prices. The primary cost of booms has not typically been overbuilding, but rather the financial chaos that accompanies housing downturns.

Frequency and diversity of fungi colonizing tissues of upland cotton.

A study of the mycoflora of upland cotton in Alabama was conducted throughout the 2000 and 2001 growing seasons. Plants were sampled at seedling, first bloom, full bloom, and maturity stages of development. Thirty-seven genera representing 58 species of fungi were isolated, including 9 species of Fusarium. Fusarium oxysporum, F. solani, and F. equiseti were the most common members of this genus occurring at all four sampling stages in both years. Eight species accounted for 67% of the total fungi isolated during the two-year study. Alternaria alternata was the most common fungus encountered, accounting for 19 and 10% of the total fungi isolated in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Twenty species of fungi are reported for the first time colonizing upland cotton tissues.