With weed resistance exploding across America’s farmland, Bayer CropScience has introduced two new Stoneville cotton varieties for 2013 that give cotton growers more tools to fight weed resistance and rotate herbicide chemistries on their farms.

Steve Nichols, U.S. Agronomic Services Manager for Bayer CropScience, gave the media an overview of the new varieties during the Beltwide Cotton Conferences last week.

Nichols explained that the ST 4946GLB2 is an early-medium maturing GlyTol LibertyLink Bollgard II variety with exceptional yield potential. “It’s widely adapted across the entire cotton-growing region. That speaks a lot about the stability and the consistency of the performance of it,” adding that it has offers root-knot nematode tolerance. “We’re looking for more varieties with different maturities to give that root-knot nematode tolerance, and this is going to deliver that.” Plus, he said it will have tolerance to the Liberty herbicides.

The other variety, ST 6448GLB2, gives a full-season capability. “It’s the first variety that we’ve really had that meets that full-season market for the South Region. So this variety fits very well in the South Delta, the Georgia market and even into South Carolina,” Nichols said. It also has a dual-herbicide technology that gives growers, especially in Georgia, a tool against resistant weeds.

Nichols added that the development of the Bayer CropScience Agronomic Services, providing hundreds of field trials, helps his company make these kind of developments in cotton varieties to match the right varieties for the right fields.

Listen to Steve tell us about the new Stoneville varieties as well as the role of Bayer CropScience Agronomic Services: Steve Nichols, Bayer CropScience