Auburn, Sept. 10, 2002 --- Last summer, Jimmy Newby noticed some of his best yielding cotton was showing stress, but he was at a loss to explain why.

He first blamed it on fertility, then hardpan and then water drainage.

Horace Haney, right, who, along with his brother and their two sons, farms 4,600 acres of cotton in the Tennessee Valley, discusses crop conditions with Curtis Grissom, Limestone County Extension coordinator. Haney is one of many cotton producers in the Valley whose fields have tested positive for reniform nematodes that have caused steep yield reductions in some areas.

Finally, after ruling out all three, he began suspecting another culprit. Soil sampling confirmed his suspicions. As it turned out, his problems were caused by reniform nematodes that had somehow crossed over the nearby Tennessee River into his cropland.

As he recalls, "It was one of the biggest surprises of my life."

Newby is one of many producers in the Tennessee Valley region of North Alabama coping with this summer surprise.

"They’re really hard to distinguish," says Horace Haney, a producer in nearby Tanner, who also farms cropland that has tested positive for nematodes. "You blame it on seed, dry weather, insects, and all the time, it’s nematodes."

This year, experts have discovered a substantial percentage of North Alabama cropland has been affected by the pathogen, which, until only a few years ago, was a problem associated primarily with the southern part of the state.

"Probably about 20 percent of acreage is affected, if not more," says Newby’s local agent, Limestone County Extension Agent Curtis Grissom.

"Some growers probably haven’t yet determined it’s a big enough reason to invest the time and money to combat it. But as time passes, you’ll have more realizing that it is a problem.

"It’s here to stay, and we’ve got to find ways to combat it."

The problem for Newby and other producers is that very little is currently available in their region to deal with nematodes.

Temik applied either immediately before or during planting has helped, but producers still face the added challenge of deciding what to do further into the growing season.

For his part, Newby applies Temik during planting, followed by two sprayings of the foliar insecticide Vydate, which has some effect on nematodes.

"It isn’t a foolproof deal, but somehow we’ve been able to keep the numbers from becoming astronomical," Newby says.

"If we ever got it as bad as folks in South Alabama, we’d have to quit cotton entirely or find some way to use Telone or something else that is foolproof."

Telone, a far more effective control for nematodes, is currently not a viable option for Valley producers. For it to work effectively, it must be injected into a seedbed -- 12 to 18 inches beneath the surface -- in soil that has been adequately pulverized, with clods and residue removed.

Seedbeds, however, are ill suited to North Alabama, partly because of the clay soils but also because of the widespread adoption of no-till and other reduced tillage systems.

And there is the added problem of expense.

Telone costs between $30 and $40 an acre – not an attractive option to many producers in an age when reducing input costs are as vital to long-term survival as increasing yields are.

That leaves corn rotation, which, in most cases is equally impractical unless producers can irrigate.

"But even with irrigation, rotation is no panacea," Newby says.

"We’ve had some of our acreage in corn, but by the end of the next cotton crop, the numbers were back up to where they were."

While conceding there are still a lot of unanswered questions, Charles Burmester, Alabama Cooperative Extension System agronomist, and Dr. Kathy McLean, Auburn University assistant professor of plant pathology, are exploring several options at the Tennessee Valley Research and Extension Center in Belle Mina and on nearby private fields.

One approach involves at-planting and side dress treatments using Temik.

Burmester is also looking at Vydate as well as various forms of crop rotation. He and McLean are also hoping to find nematode-resistant varieties.

"There won’t be any variety that will be completely resistant, but we hope to find some that can tolerate higher nematode populations," Burmester says. "We’re looking for stopgap approaches until we get all the answers."

For now, many producers throughout the Valley are still being blindsided by the pathogen, attributing their crop’s poor performance to anything but nematodes.

"We went a year or two before we knew the decline in yields was attributed to nematodes," Newby recalls. "We looked at everything else first."

"Aside from the old problems of markets and labor, it’s the most serious problem we’ve got. But lots of producers still don’t know what we’re talking about."