S1E3: 2024 Peanut Variety & Management Update
Today we hear from our Peanut Specialist, Dan Anco, as he discusses peanut variety and management. Dan will show us variety photos and plant growth and disease ratings research he conducted during the previous growth season. He also highlights high oleic varieties with white mold resistance.
Date: Feb 22, 2024
Location: Allendale Extension Office
Production Credits:
Introduction: Hannah Mikell
Producer: Kevin Royal
Editor: Kayla Peters
Technical: Trey McAlhany
Music Composer: R.M Davis
Special Thanks:
Transcript:
[Hannah Mikell]
Welcome to today's episode of Cultivate Ag. Join me as we hear from our peanut specialist, Dr. Dan Anco, as he speaks to us today about peanut varieties and management.
Dan will show us a variety of specific pictures according to plant growth and disease ratings among the tests he conducted during the previous growing season. He also highlighted several high oleic varieties with white mold resistance that boasted some words of 5,000 pounds per acre. All righty, Dr. Anco, take it away.
[Dan Anco]
So first I've got a couple slides from an on-farm trial we conducted this one over at Rob Bates' place in Barnwell County. And we were looking at four of the different runner varieties that have been released recently.
We always like doing a lot of different variety trials over the course of the year. And so we wanted to look at these on a little bit larger scale. I think these were about 250 or so feet.
And so we were looking at Georgia 16HO, that was kind of like our reference variety there. FloRun T61, that's kind of the new one out of Florida that's going to be replacing 331. FloRun 52N, that one's not high oleic, but also a new one out of Florida.
And then AU NPL 17 there. So, this one was planted the third week of May, so May 23rd, that was right after we had that cool wet spell. And so it was still a little bit wet when we were getting in there, but it was dry enough to get a test planted and everything too.
So as everyone remembers, last year we had a cool start to the year. And so the stands were overall kind of left some room there to be desired there. But nevertheless, we went in, did stand counts, you know, two different times, two weeks after planting and then about three weeks after planting, just to kind of compare relative vigor of these different varieties.
And first off at about, you know, two weeks after planting, FloRun T61, that had the most vigor, the most plants emerged compared to these other varieties there. Although then when we look at the next rating, another week after that, three weeks out, then for the most part, everybody else kind of caught up to T61 with the exception of AU NPL 17. That one still kind of lagged behind a little bit here in this test.
Here's a couple of pictures. This was when we went in and did a virus rating. So right at about 70 days after planting, kind of right before halfway through the season right there.
So, a couple of big picture items here. One of the things we can see just comparing the different varieties is how the canopies compare to each other. AU NPL 17, a little bit smaller, a little bit longer time closing the rows there compared to T61.
T61 kind of got up going pretty good early on and it continued its canopy growth going in through the end of the season. And pretty much the same statement here can be made about FloRun 52N on the right, a little bit larger canopy there compared to 16HO on the left. For the most part, even talking to some other farmers, how 16HO has performed on their farm in previous years, it tends to more or less be similar to what we see with Georgia 06G as far as a little bit slower growing for the canopy at the beginning of the season.
Oftentimes it catches up and does just fine, especially with yield too, later on. But as far as overall, that kind of a bigger early, early season, it's some of these other Florida lines tend to show a little bit more growth energy going on early on. We dug the test 146 days after planting and then harvested it about 20 days later.
There was a lot of deer pressure in this test, but before we get to that, we'll look at the virus ratings over here on the left. And for the most part, this one planted towards the latter part of May. Due to that, due to the flight patterns of the thrips, they're inherently at a little bit less of a risk for thrips injury and then virus infection as a result of that feeding.
So overall, our total level of virus was pretty tempered overall, right about 5 percent or so, or less. But what we do see, even with that being the situation, we see the resistance from T61 also having an effect here based off of those conditions. They had a little bit less than half as much virus here in this test by 2 percent incidence.
That's nothing to get worried about compared to right about four and a half to 5 percent for some of these other ones. And even that, that's nothing to really write home about, but it still is a good illustration of the comparative difference in the variety of resistance there. Also just another point of reference, this test was planted with AgLogic that helped to be consistent with some of the other fields that we're taking a look at.
And that usually has pretty good performance. We don't see as much of a response with regards to tomato spotted wilt management as compared to phorate or Thimet, for example. But we still see a better result than we see with something like imidacloprid going out in-furrow.
Even though it is a granular, so I know sometimes folks cross that off the list due to that, but in any event, that's what we saw there. These four varieties, they all had about the same amount of pod maturity. When we blasted them all, everything got dug at the same time, 146 days after planting.
They were all sitting right there at about the 69 to 72 percent orange brown black pods. As far as yields were concerned, there was a competitive performance of the three of them. There's 16HO, T61 and 52N.
We did see a difference of those three versus AU NPL 17 in this test in this year, in part probably due to some of that growth of the AU NPL. That one's canopy overall, even in a better growing year, it s a little bit smaller than what we see for some of these other varieties. And that plus the deer feeding probably compounded on top of each other.
In any event, we saw a 700 pound difference between the AU NPL and these other three varieties. So that's always one test. Each test has something unique to offer compared to any other test that we might look at.
But at the same time, we're kind of interested in how consistent these different varieties are over a large number of tests. And so that's what this slide is doing. This is basically pulling over all our different cultivar test data over the years.
And so we've got two different numbers there in purple, to the left of the orange dot, that's the number of trials going into that number. And then the yield overall, taking into account some differences in the test, that's what we see out there on the right. So again, just taking a big picture look at this.
If we look at the top five varieties here, they've been pretty consistent to what we've seen in previous years. Georgia 16HO, 297, 331, T61 being competitive right there too. And then Georgia 12Y.
TUFRunner 511, not a big difference there compared to those other five varieties, but we are seeing less availability of that one and less growth, less production of that variety on farm in recent years. So, I tend not to worry too much about that one. All five of those with the exception of 12Y are high oleic.
12Y is normal oleic if that's something of interest, but 12Y has a lot of good things going for it. Still has the best white mold resistance of available runners that we have today. T61 has a touch of white mold resistance as well, and we'll talk a little bit about that later on, too.
Overall performance, that's all good and something that we do want to keep in mind. The other flip side of that is the practical availability of these different varieties. And so that's kind of what this table is looking at.
This is the certified seed acres coming out of Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama. The varieties in blue, those are the ones that we're seeing more availability of coming out of this previous year compared to two years ago. So we should see more availability of Georgia 12Y and then 16HO compared to 2022.
We don't plant a lot of TifNV-High O/L in the state. It's got some good characteristics, but we also don't have a lot of retino nematode on peanut that we're aware of. That variety, we're seeing less availability of that one.
In part too, just because it's being replaced with TifNV-HG, which has some other good yield characteristics as well. But anyway, that one's kind of going out on the side. TUFRunner 297 looks about stable as far as what we've seen for certified seed acres coming out of 23 compared to 22.
And then FloRun 331, that's worked good for us on-farm in a lot of situations. We're seeing about a little bit less than half of the percentage of seed acres from this most recent growing season compared to two years ago. Some different characteristics for that one.
Part of the reason probably for seeing that one becoming less available, again, just having the continual release of new varieties, we're kind of having a transition to some of these newer ones like T61. We can't always have everything available all the time. Here's the same chart here for Virginia type varieties.
The top three performers here, Walton, Bailey II, and NC-20. Of those three, NC-20 and Walton might have a touch longer maturity, maybe about four or so days compared to Bailey II. And that's one of the reasons oftentimes when we're planting Virginia varieties is to take advantage of that shorter maturity period.
If we were growing a large number of Virginia acres, for example, having a little bit of a variation there in maturity length could let us spread them out a little bit, but we can do the same thing with planting date if conditions are all good there, too. All things considered, Bailey II, probably still the best overall Virginia variety based off of our data. And then there's some other new ones coming down the pipeline as well, like AU Barkley.
It's been all right. Ga 19HP in our variety trials, it tends not to yield as well as some of these other varieties like Bailey II, for example. It does have some other good characteristics going for it.
And talking to guys who have grown it, they have liked it. It does tend to exhibit more runner characteristics, especially with regard to the canopy size. That's because its parentage is two different runners, but it does qualify for that USDA definition, 40 percent fancy pods or more, which then can classify it as a Virginia market type and then be sold for that purpose.
That one tends not to show as much of a pod maturity as traditional Virginia varieties. So that's just another kind of good thing to keep in mind. So maybe ballpark settling out right at about 65 percent or so orange brown black pods for 19HP compared to maybe looking at 70 percent or more for something like a Bailey II.
Another thing, without going into too much detail, one of the things we've been looking at over the years is what's the economic thresholds? What are the good trigger points for digging different varieties based off of how mature that they are? And, you know, traditionally looking at some of the runners, we're looking at about 75 percent orange brown black pods.
That's going back to work that was done with FloRunner. It had its heyday about 50 years or so ago. We've had a lot of different advancements and changes in variety genetics over the years.
More recent varieties tend not to get to that high of a level of pod maturity under our growing conditions. A lot of times for something like 297, 331 or 16HO, they tend to hover right at about 55 percent or 60 percent. We could sometimes see them get pushed a little bit more, but usually we're not seeing more than 70 percent orange brown black pods for some of those other varieties.
One of the things we wanted to do was, in addition to looking at individual thresholds for individual varieties, is there some kind of like a big picture moving target piece of information that we could take into account? And that's what this kind of data was looking at. We took 12 different experiments, you know, looking at a lot of different varieties in there.
I think they were all runner varieties over the years. And we did see a consistent relationship there as a variety is on the way to optimal economic value for that year and those conditions. It tends to have at least 1 percent orange brown black pod increase per day.
So if we were taking two different samples 10 days apart, then we would have at least about 10 percent of a pod maturity increase over that period of time. When they're on the way up there, they're having that rate of increase. But then when they get to that top kind of plateau period, we're no longer seeing a substantial increase in the value of those peanuts.
Then they kind of drop below that 0. 8 or 1 percent pod maturity increase per day. So that's kind of like a generic, in a good way, a piece of information we could use when determining how mature these different varieties are and when it's a good time to dig them.
And one of the other values of that is particularly if we get one of these like monkey wrench years like we had in 2019, where we have drought conditions, even if we let them sit out there forever, then they're not going to get up to that high characteristic level that we might normally see for pod maturity. But when we can kind of look at how it's progressing over the course of that growing season, then we kind of see when it's tapering off. So here's an example here.
If we took two different samples, one's at 48 percent orange brown black pods on day one, and we go back in there 10 days later, and then it's at 54 percent orange brown black pods. That's what we get a 6 percent over that period of time, 10 days, you know, dividing it out. So that's 0.
6 percent per day over that period of time based off of that information, even though normally we might want to see it go in above 60 percent or 70 percent orange brown black pods. That would be an indication to dig those peanuts in that year based off of the growing conditions and the response that we're getting off of that variety. And so, you know, that's all nice information, but here's some of the results that we saw out of our digging tests for our runner varieties from last year.
And this includes runner varieties that were not included in data set as well. So, for example, with FloRun 52N, going from 141 days out to 146 days at five days difference, that relationship that we take a look at over there. And what we see basically from here is that the relationship kind of holds true under this.
We didn't get any increase under that condition. I mean, there's always going to be variability from plot to plot and all that stuff in a field. We didn't get a high rate of in-pod maturity of that variety.
And so that would indicate it's time to dig them at that 146 days. This was one of our tests as we were already planning on going out there a little bit later. So we had another later digging day, 153 days, while we saw a slight increase in the amount of pod maturity and a slight increase in the amount of yield overall, we didn't get a significant increase there.
So it was costing us a little bit more time under that condition. Now these are just the yield numbers. I need to go back and turn around and add in the gray data so we can look at economic value.
That's the relationship that our previous kind of data set was showing there. But we do see it kind of translating here as well for 52N there. We didn't get any difference for T61 or 20VHO based off of last year's growing conditions in this test.
For Georgia 21GR, if we looked from the first two digging dates, five days difference there, then we're getting more than 5 percent over the course of those days. So, we would leave it out there and that ended up working out. We didn't see a yield benefit in that particular period of time there, but when we let it sit out there longer based off of that difference in the pods, then we ended up getting a greater amount of yield at the end of it when we were there at 153 days.
So that was nice to see that being consistent in that situation. Just kind of switching gears here. There's always a lot of different products out there.
This was one that we wanted to take a look at. We saw advertisements in, I don't know which magazine it was, maybe Peanut Grower or something like that. So, this was one of those like seaweed compounds that we could put out there.
A couple of different ways we can look at it. This was Guarantee Complex. It's a mixture of some different microbes in there.
And so we put it out two different ways. We put out in-furrow there and then we put it out only as a broadcast treatment going out at 30 days and at 45 days. If you remember years back, Jay Chapin, he used to like to put in like a beer comparison.
So we didn't do that one, but we put in like, you know, spent coffee grounds, kind of getting at the same thing here. So we did that both in-furrow at about the same amount of rate and then doing the two broadcast treatments as well. Just to kind of see, I think it was advertised for maybe improving stand emergence and overall yield benefits.
So I think we replicated about, I think at least five times. Anyway, we took a look at some different things. We didn't see any differences with, you know, how many plants are emerged at 13 days or again at about three weeks after planting.
Everything right on par with each other. No benefit there. I had no real difference with the tomato spotted wilt in that test as well.
And then same thing when we get to yield, no difference, good or bad based off of these varieties or based on the different treatments. I'm glad to acknowledge this is only one year data, right? There's always more different environments out there, different growing conditions and everything.
It is nice to be able to see cost return if we're going to be paying more money for a product to be able to see it translate into a consistent response with yield improvements later on. Switching gears again, looking at some leaf spot data. This was one, not to spend too much time on it, but something that peanut community as a whole and myself also have been very excited about looking at some of these newer varieties that have extreme amounts of resistance to late leaf spot and they're being described as being able to be planted and managed without spraying any leaf spot fungicides.
And so we did a test where we did that. We compared three of these resistant lines to two controls that we have like O6G and Georgia 16HO. Half of them were grown without any fungicide.
The other half were sprayed with about six applications of a Bravo plus [ ] all out there. On the left is a Bravo tab, a real good looking canopy. And on the right at 121 days, we're seeing a lot of defoliation there based off of this.
So this was almost kind of getting into the situation almost as if we weren't having a rotated field, right? We did rotate the field for soil purposes. We took all the debris and the trash from the peanut that was growing in a neighboring field last year and then moved it in there during the dormant season.
So it was like it was not rotated there. Here's the defoliation results at about 140 days. Everything that had fungicide on it all looked real good.
Basically, no defoliation out there. Everything else non-treated, we saw more than 90 percent defoliation there. So again, this is just one year data.
We might see different things under different conditions, but based off of this at the same time, I think it's also important not to ignore what we do see. Based off of this, we still saw benefits applying the fungicides based off of this growing condition. We might see better outcomes if we had better rotation and perhaps earlier planting.
I have seen data from other states, too, where it does look good in those situations, but nevertheless, we were seeing a disease breakdown there. We have a lot of different fungicides for managing leaf spot and white mold too. Here we're still talking about leaf spot.
For the most part, if we keep to a 15-day interval, we could see differences between different fungicides. But under this test here, we got a lot more flexibility with our choice of individual fungicide product when we did stick to a 15-day interval schedule. We did start to see some breakdown here.
That B treatment there, that's having two extended intervals of Miravis and Elatus going together. So having about a month in between fungicide applications during those cases. We didn't have to go back many years where that was a highly effective treatment and having an advantage for cost return compared to some other treatments.
But again, based off of this test in this year, we're still seeing some breakdown there. This one didn't have any differences in yield here overall, which we don't always see differences in yield, but sometimes we do. Here's another test.
It was in the same field. Again, this one was looking at a Virginia variety, Emery, which is more susceptible than runners like 16HO, for example. But again, we're seeing the same situation here as far as total disease control is when we get away from a 15-day program, which here is Bravo and Excalia.
Excalia by itself isn't really bringing a lot to the table as far as leaf spot management is concerned. It's more of a soil disease, white mold fungicide. But when we get away from that, we start extending out our intervals.
Again, it's not very surprising, but here we're seeing a great amount of increase in defoliation. Basically, no difference compared to the non-treated up here, right at about 80 percent defoliation there compared to 13 percent for the 15-day program here. And in some of those cases, we did start to see a significantly less amount of yield with that extended interval under this high-pressure situation.
And then we kind of see some intermediate effects looking at three-week intervals. I think there's still opportunities to use extended intervals under our management programs, but a couple of caveats there, it would work better with runner varieties that have a little bit more resistance, reduced susceptibility compared to Virginia types. And then if we're limited to only one application, and again, if we stick to three weeks instead of four weeks, we kind of build in a lot of safeguards and buffers for our program overall, especially too, because ideally we like to think that we'll be able to get it back in there exactly in three weeks or four weeks or however long it is.
But sometimes the weather kind of changes our plans for us. And so it's kind of good to have those safeguards kind of built in there too. This is the same thing.
We don't have to worry about that. Briefly, I'll kind of run through some white mold stuff and general recommendations that we talk about. So sometimes we see it during the course of the growing season, either as the growth of the fungus on the left or as a hit killing the plant on the right.
But some years too, it isn't until we run the digger through the field where we see that the damage has already been done. It didn't show up until we inverted the peanuts. Some general comments, of course, if we can have good rotations, especially if we've identified a field that we do have white mold issues with or stem rot, a couple of different names for it there.
If we can have good rotation, then that's something that we can't always just buy in a bottle, too. So, if we have at least two years out of peanuts or more, that's going to be better. Avoiding soybeans in our rotation.
We do have plenty of guys who are growing soybeans with peanut in a compatible rotation. Most of the time, the soil disease in those fields hasn't become an issue. If we start seeing it become an issue, that's something that we can modify to kind of put it more in our favor.
Again, always using resistant varieties, Bailey II, and Sullivan for Virginia types. Those have a good amount of resistance. Georgia 12Y, that's the best runner for white mold resistance that we have available.
And then also if we don't have as much 331 around, T61, that has some resistance as well that we can get some benefit there. And then also AU NPL 17 a little bit. White mold risk as far as planting date is kind of the flip side compared to leaf spot, but similar to tomato spot wilt.
Planting earlier tends to put us at an increased predisposition to white mold infection. Late April or like the first week of May, sometimes depending upon the year, if it's average or a little bit cooler, then we can tend to have a little bit more white mold for that. Here's a quick slide here showing variety resistance, 331 being better than 16HO, 297 and 511.
And then here we can kind of see that combination of the variety as well as looking at different planting dates. We get more flexibility with resistance. Here 331, we get about as good of a result no matter when we planted it based off of this test in late April, May 10th or May 23rd.
The varieties that are more susceptible like 16HO or 297, then we start to see more of an effect of planting date that we get greater amounts of white mold incidents up there if we plant it either in the end of April or early May and less when we plant it in that third week of May. Fungicides ideally, folks are good about this already as far as starting our fungicide programs that have activity for white mold at no later than 60 days. If we get a hot year, just to put that into context, from May 1st to June 14th, that's about a little bit over 900 cumulative degree days compared to our nine-year average about 780 cumulative degree days there.
If we get a hot beginning of the growing season, then add a fungicide that has activity towards soil disease at that 45-day application, for example. And this could be something, even if we're just putting out a Bravo in there and we add a little bit of tebuconazole to it, or we could do a standalone product like Lucento or Priaxor. That'll give us some activity there too.
Last thing I'll talk about too, just looking at rainfall, 80 percent of our acres are dry land. And so that's one of the questions too this past year, am I missing out if I'm not getting my fungicide washed into the soil? There has been a good study that was done several years back where they do show an improvement if we can get that fungicide washed in as quick as possible.
Ideally, a lot of times we're balancing leaf spot control and white mold control. And so sometimes we want to let it sit out there for a little bit so that we get leaf spot control before getting it washed down. 80 percent dry land most of the time, we're kind of looking to see what we can do with the rain as far as being able to schedule it exactly at X number of hours after planting.
Just a couple of things to keep in mind for this study, they use micro plots about three feet wide, and then they had about three plants in there. And so they're sitting ballpark about a foot apart or so, it's kind of in a triangle pattern in there. And so they had a little bit of a sparser canopy than what we normally have on farm planting, usually at the low end, five seed per foot, typically closer to six or seven a lot of times too.
So we wanted to see what kind of results we would get over looking at a little bit larger scale. At our field trials, we had 11 different data sets here, nine from South Carolina, two from Mississippi. And then we had a range of precipitation amounts falling down there, anywhere from nothing to a half inch, one inch up to two inches, which is good because ideally we do want to take a look at what kind of response we get under different situations.
We got a good fit overall, how we were predicting it all. Comparing the different fungicides first, where we can see that top dashed line, that's kind of where we're getting overlap of the performance of these different ones. And so, if we're up at the high rate of those different fungicides, so either like Convoy, Excalia or Elatus or even a Provost Silver too, which adds in the Tebuconazole plus the [ .
] there, then we do get competitive performance as far as that's concerned. Sometimes we might have a little bit more control with something like Excalia compared to Convoy or Provo Silver. There still is a lot of overlap there, which is a good thing, right?
It's good to have more flexibility as far as that's concerned. And then same thing that we get over there on the right as far as yield is concerned. We took a look at adding sulfur in here, too.
In the past, we've seen a benefit of sulfur with leaf spot fungicides. We got no benefit there for white mold. And then another follow-up to that is, okay, if different fungicides costs different amounts, how does that amount play into our comparison?
And so when we look at the amount of control that we get per dollar spent on the fungicide here, and again, this is just from one source that I was able to get information from. If we look at the different products, the one that has the greatest amount of control per dollar spent is Tebuconazole. But again, that's not the only thing we want to focus at there.
It was about maybe double, a little bit over 1 percent compared to 0. 4 to 0. 6 percent for some of those other ones.
So that product, when we're applying it out there, it has a lower level of maximum control. And so while it is economical and efficient and a good product to still keep in our rotation, if we're strapped for time, for example, or we've only got so many applications to go out there too, that we get a lot more latitude out of some of these other more premium products that cost a little bit more, but they're able to deliver a greater dose of control at a time. As far as rainfall is concerned, we do get a benefit there over the two days that are following application.
But again, it's not as much as what we see with the Tebuconazole application there too. So if we get about four tenths of an inch, we get about 1 percent control, which is roughly about a third is what we saw with Tebuconazole there. So, we do get benefit from the rainfall, but again, it isn't to the point where we're wasting our time if we're not getting the rainfall on bringing it down there.
It is going to help. It is a good thing if we take advantage of it, that's great. It's also good to know that, you know, we're still getting benefits out there without the rainfall.
You know, when we take into account some of the conditions of the previous study that looked at that too, we get about the same amount of contribution of rainfall compared to what we saw in our data there, right at about 1. 41 percent. Looking at yields, four tenths of an inch, at least at $485 per ton contract price comes out to be about $20 per acre benefit there compared to not having the rainfall.
That's kind of going two ways, both for washing the fungicide, getting better control and for just having the water availability for producing pods, which it needs that to do that anyway. Yeah, we kind of already talked about this, but if we can take advantage of the rainfall, it's great to do, but again, we're not losing everything if we don't get it washed in there.
[Hannah Mikell]
Gracious, Dr. Anco, it sounds like you and your crew have been pretty busy with all the peanut plot work. We sure do appreciate it. Thanks, Dan.
That's going to wrap us up for today's peanut presentation. I enjoyed learning more about how to better time our runner and Virginia digging strategies, as well as the best management strategies for that old pesky late leaf spot. Remember, staying informed and adaptive is key in our ever-evolving landscape of agriculture.
Thank you for tuning in to Cultivate Ag podcast, where we take you from the classroom to the cab. Stay tuned for our next episode. Clemson Extension is always striving to better serve our growers, as we hope this podcast will simply add another tool in your toolbox.
From our classrooms to your cabs, we wish you a successful growing season.