Alabama Extension peanut agronomist Kris Balkcom outlines challenges from 2024 as producers look ahead to this year.
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To prepare for the coming crop year, most experts agree that it’s important to look at what worked and what didn’t work in the prior year. In Alabama, Auburn Extension peanut agronomist Kris Balkcom says the 2024 season felt like riding a roller coaster of weather conditions.
“The season started out good then turned hot and dry, followed by flooding rains with cloudy, cooler weather,” he says as an example of the constant changes.
“We didn’t see much Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus early in the season, but we did see it show up in many fields later in the season. Again, this is predominantly due to the amount of drought and heat stress the crop was under,” Balkcom says. “The virus seems to express itself more because of the unfavorable conditions the crop was under.”
Balkcom says some peanuts were ready to be dug in September, but moisture was needed to start digging in order to reduce possible equipment damage and harvest losses from hard ground. “During that time, farmers started reporting two to four inches of rain in some places and only one to two inches in other locations,” he says. “When rains came on the first of September, which were from 0.3 to 0.6 tenths of an inch, we started the 2024 peanut harvest season.”
Unfortunately, an active hurricane season meant that bigger rains would be dropping an overabundance of water on the fields.
“This washed some fields severely, not only the soil but also washing around inverted peanut rows making harvest difficult to impossible in some places,” Balkcom says.
Big Move For Spider Mites
Another issue Alabama producers saw in 2024 was spider mites.
“As you are aware, we would usually only see spider mites in a dryland field where a pyrethroid was applied earlier in the season, which also killed off the beneficial insects. This season, we started seeing spider mites in dryland fields that had not had any insecticide applied early in the season,” he says. “After having big rains in places across the Wiregrass area, you would have thought it would have helped eliminate the spider mites. However, we then found them in irrigated fields that had adequate soil moisture. This certainly raised our eyebrows and focused our attention.”
Balkcom says the Alabama peanut team is working on figuring out what caused this change in occurrence of spider mites.
At the time, Balkcom says he was advising producers to apply fungicides before the storm.
“Many farmers were asking about treating spider mites since they were making a trip across the field,” he says. “I was only recommending treating spider mites when making a fungicide trip in the field if spider mites were present.
“The spider mite treatment only works on contact with no residual. Therefore, only treat fields with spider mites present; do not pretreat by trying to prevent them from showing up, which would result in a waste of money and time.”
Patience Needed For Late-Planted Crop To Reach Maturity
A final challenge to the 2024 crop year was in getting good grades with a crop that had planting dates that were pretty far apart. The rain in September was nice, but, unfortunately, it was late in the season for the earliest-planted peanuts, Balkcom says.
“We can’t give these peanuts that were put on the plant from the September rain enough time to mature without giving up the older peanuts on the plant,” he says.
For those peanuts planted in the first week of June, Balkcom expected grades would improve and be closer to the low 70s range.
“Peanuts planted at the end of May and first of June faced the challenge of enough heat units and moisture to finish them out. Lower nighttime temperatures slow maturity tremendously, and patience was needed for a late-planted group to give them more days than normal to finish out maturity.” PG
