During the visit at the Southeast Georgia Research and Education Center Scott Tubbs, University of Georgia cropping systems agronomist, explained his research focus and provided an update on the 2014 Georgia Peanut Crop. The primary focus of his research program is to look at different aspects of peanut agronomics such as tillage, cover crop effects prior to the peanut crop, row patterns, seeding rates, plant populations, different planting date affects such as replanting and many other agronomics that effect various aspects of disease, entomology and weed science.
“Some of the primary issues of the 2014 peanut crop are mainly related to moisture and rainfall,” Tubbs says. “On the non-irrigated peanut crop we ended up with a lot of dryland peanuts that have not fully developed and are behind on maturity.” The yield looks like it will be suppressed. There was poor flowering and poor pod set on that crop early on when the rainfall stopped and we ended up with very dry conditions for the months of July and August. So those conditions are starting to become rectified with recent rainfall. However, we are getting to the point in the season where it is going to be difficult to make up the time we have lost for getting a good pod set and good yields on the dryland crop.
Some of the research funding from the Georgia Peanut Commission and the National Peanut Board are projects where I have looked at seeding rates and various replant decisions for peanuts. The trials are included in multiple locations throughout the state and at the Southeast Research and Education Center in Midville, Georgia. In these trials Tubbs looks at how important is it to get an established plant stand on the first planting. “If you can’t get a good established plant stand on the initial planting the amount of money it costs to go back into a field is costly to a grower,” he says. The additional costs include the cost of more passes through the field, additional cost of more seed and then also determining when is the appropriate time to dig based on maturity. With two different planting dates growing in the same field at the same it is very difficult to determine the optimum maturity. Because some peanuts will be over mature while others are immature.
A lot of information from the UGA Peanut Team is available online at ugapeanuts.com.