Source: TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
SORGHUM COTTON ROTATION - A PRAGMATIC ROUTE TO IMPROVE FARM PRODUCTIVITY IN WATER LIMITED ENVIRONMENTS OF THE SOUTHWEST HIGH PLAINS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1030410
Grant No.
2023-78411-39494
Cumulative Award Amt.
$294,000.00
Proposal No.
2022-07284
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Apr 1, 2023
Project End Date
Mar 31, 2025
Grant Year
2023
Program Code
[A1811]- AFRI Commodity Board Co-funding Topics
Recipient Organization
TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
LUBBOCK,TX 79409
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Rapid and uncontrolled extraction of groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer and poor water-conserving agricultural practices are causing significant challenges to sustain the agricultural industry in the southwest High Plains. To sustain crop cultivation in regions limited by water, adopting grain sorghum and cotton rotation is proposed to be a pragmatic option compared to continuous cotton. However, a systematic analysis of the sorghum-cotton rotation considering it'simplication on soil health associated microbial (bacteria and fungi) changes, farm productivity and economic outcomes, particularly connecting the findings from research farm to the producer field has not been conducted. To facilitate producers to make well-informed decisions, the project objectives are designed to (i) Quantify changes in crop yield and quality with a sorghum-cotton rotation under different irrigation levels, management practices and soil types; (ii) Explore soil microbial changes and associated impact on soil health and crop productivity in a sorghum-cotton rotation compared to continuous cotton and (iii) Determine the economic outcomes and environmental sustainability of a sorghum-cotton rotation in the target region. In addition, the project will leverage TAWC (Texas Alliance for Water Conservation), a long term "Producer-Teaching-Producer" demonstration program in operation for 17 years, to disseminate project findings to a wider group of stakeholders in the High Plains. The comparative assessment of findings from the research farm and producer fields will facilitate developing an economically feasible pathway for incorporating sorghum-cotton rotation in water-limited environments of the southwest High Plains.
Animal Health Component
80%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
80%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
11115201060100%
Knowledge Area
111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water;

Subject Of Investigation
1520 - Grain sorghum;

Field Of Science
1060 - Biology (whole systems);
Goals / Objectives
Long term goalDemonstarte soil health and microbial changes, economic outcomes, and associated environmental benefits by introducing grain sorghum into a continuous cotton system under semi arid conditionsSupportive objectivesObj. 1 - Quantify changes in crop yield and quality with a sorghum-cotton rotation under different irrigation levels, management practices and soil typesObj. 2 - Explore soil microbial changes and associated impact on soil health and crop productivity in a sorghum-cotton rotation compared to their respective continuous croppingObj. 3 - Determine the economic outcomes and environmental sustainability of a sorghum-cotton rotation under water limited environments of southwest High PlainsObj. 4 - Enhance awareness of the economic and environmental sustainability of sorghum-cotton rotation under semi-arid environments of the southwest High Plains
Project Methods
Agronomic approach Trials will be carried out on the university research farm in New Deal and producer field equipped with a pivot. On the research farm, we will establish four treatments (sorghum-sorghum, cotton-cotton, sorghum-cotton and cotton-sorghum rotations). The replicated trial will be established on a 9-acre field, with sub-surface drip irrigation. Three different irrigation levels will be maintained on the research farm trial i.e. 80% ET (Evapotranspiration), 60% ET and 30% ET, with 80% considered to be a true control for comparison with two reduced available water treatments. A similar approach will be carried out on the producer field, with a quarter of the pivot maintained under 60% ET and their other quarter per crop with 30% ET. The pivot (120 acres) will be managed under half circles of grain sorghum and cotton in rotation over the duration of the project. All trials, including those on the research farm and the producer field will be under a no-till system.Each replicate plot on the university farm and each quarter of the pivot on the producer field will be equipped with soil moisture probes that have the potential to acquire real-time soil moisture data at every 4-inch interval down to 48 inches. The weather stations on the experimental site and on the producer field (installed as a part of this project) will be used in combination with the soil moisture data to generate evapotranspiration-based irrigation scheduling from tools generated by the TAWC. During the course of the experiments detailed information related to management operations, soil parameters, fertilizer application, fuel usage, herbicides, amount of water applied, and others will be recorded. At the end of the season, crops on the research farm and on the producer field will be harvested mechanically and grain yield and quality in sorghum and lint yield in cotton will be recorded. On the research farm experiments, about 5 x 5 m2 area will be harvested manually at the ground level across all treatments and replications at two key developmental stages (50% flowering and harvest) to record the biomass per unit area. The above ground biomass data will be used to associate with changes in the microbial composition and parameters related to soil health. In addition, starting from 30 days after planting, aerial flights with UAV fitted with RGB, multispectral cameras and thermal imaging will be obtained at 15-day intervals to assess the crop health, canopy temperature and senescence across different irrigation treatments in all four-crop combination. At these 15-day intervals, SPAD-based chlorophyll content and stomatal conductance using a LI-600 porometer will be measured to provide ground-truthed data to support findings from aerial imagery.Microbial analysis Soils will be collected at 10 cm depth from three timepoints annually to the study microbial community dynamics: once in spring prior to the crop growing season, once in summer during the peak vegetative growth prior to grain filling phase, and once in the fall at the end of the crop growing season. We will record soil moisture and temperature in the field at the time of soil collection. After transporting samples to the Soil Microbial Ecology lab at TTU, each sample will be divided into two sub-samples and either air-dried to store for soil physical and chemical analyses or frozen, field-moist, at −80 °C to await microbial analyses. In air-dried soil samples collected at each of the three sampling dates for two years, soil pH, EC and soil organic matter will be measured in 1:1 soil: water extracts in the laboratory. We will extract soil inorganic nitrogen using a 1:10 ratio of soil: 2 M KCl solution and quantify the concentrations of NH4+ and NO3− in filtered extracts via spectrophotometric absorbance at 650 nm and 540 nm wavelengths, respectively. Routine soil test nutrients (including P, K, Ca, Mg, Cu, Na, S, Zn) will be measured via inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analysis in air-dried samples sent to a commercial laboratory.Total genomic DNA will be extracted from frozen samples collected at the final timepoint each year using a DNeasy PowerSoil kit (Qiagen). After quantifying DNA concentrations using a Qubit 2.0 dsDNA assay kit (Thermo Fischer, Waltham, MA, USA), these will be sent to the Texas Tech Center for Biotechnology and Genomics (TTU-CBG) for library preparation and MiSeq Illumina sequencing using the 16S rRNA V3-V4 and ITS 1 and 2 regions to assess soil bacterial and fungal microbiomes, respectively, within each site and treatment. The resulting 16S rRNA and ITS sequences will be classified into amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) using the dada2 pipeline. These will be pre-processed using R along with R packages dada2, Biostrings, and ShortRead. Taxonomic identification will be assigned using the assignTaxonomy function, referencing the SILVA database for bacteria and the UNITE database for fungi.Economic and environmental sustainability While sorghum is considered a lower value crop compared to traditional row crops like corn and cotton, it has many economic benefits. Previous economic studies from the team have analyzed the impact of irrigation timing on crop yield. In this project, economic budgets will be created to assess the short-term profitability of a sorghum-cotton rotation system compared to continuous cropped sorghum or cotton systems. To calculate profitability on the university research farm and the producer field, the economic budgets will include all revenue sources and a complete cost accounting of all field-management operations, including energy usage. Management data will be collected from field experiments and producer sites across all continuous sorghum, cotton and their rotation and irrigation treatments. Data related to seeding rates, tillage, chemical and fertilizer applications, energy use for irrigation, and other operations collected across research trials and producer field will be analyzed using well-established econometric models to determine the cost-benefit ratio and producer's revenue with the proposed rotation. Due to the current rise in market prices and input costs, a sensitivity analysis will be conducted to create a wide range of potential profitability scenarios. A Monte Carlo risk analysis will be performed using the economic budgets by creating stochastic yield and price distributions coupled with weather data to simulate the long-term probability that sorghum-cotton rotations compared to continuous sorghum and cotton systems will provide a positive net return. Once economic budgets have been created, the field data will be input into the Fieldprint Platform® and COMET-Farm tool to determine the impact of soil health on field-level sustainability.OutreachThe 17-year long term effort from the TAWC will be leveraged as an outreach platform and the relevance of the rotation system and the benefits captured through the project will be disseminated to a wider stakeholder community through the annual "Water College". In addition, TAWC organizes farm walks during the cropping season, which will be used to spread the project findings to a larger section of the producers/stakeholders in the region. About two in-season farm-walks/demonstrations will be organized on the research farm and on the participating producer field to engage producers from different counties in the Texas High Plains. Many of these producers associated with TAWC are leaders in their communities and in the agricultural industry, holding memberships on cooperative boards and state and national commodity associations, which will aid in the promotion of these technologies beyond the Texas High Plains. Utilizing farm and ranch shows, conferences, producer events, fact sheets, radio, and on-line media TAWC has reached a combined estimated impact to exceed 32,500 persons across the region.

Progress 04/01/23 to 03/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:Due to continuous cotton production in west Texas region, the soil health is deteriorating and to ensure the sustainability of profitable crop production in the region, the project focus was on strengthening the sorghum-cotton rotation. The primary target auidence were the regional producers and crop consultants, who would help to transfer the message. To reach this auidence, sorghum-cotton rotation trial was carried out at both the research farm and also on one of the producer field. Changes/Problems:Short duration for testing crop rotations as a sustaianble strategy - With two very contrasting years, with 2023 growing season being extremely harsh and the 2024 having slightly favourable conditions but with very different rainfall and temperature conditions during different stages of the growing season, testing the sorghum cotton rotation to come up with convincing message to the producers was challenging. Long-term trials are needed to derive sustainble solutions to problems facing agriculture especially under water scare environments. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Three graduate students were involved in this research where Yusa Ichinose (agronomy), Mim Mahjabin Ferdaous (microbial dynamics) and Christopher Albus (economics) where provided multi-disciplinary research experience and trained across different research domains related to the sorghum-cotton rotation.Christopher Albus completed his masters and will graduated in Summer 2025. Yusa Ichinose will graduate in Fall 2025 while Ms. Ferdaous has opted to continue working on this topic as a part of her PhD desseration. They were provided multiple opportunities to present their work and details of these professional development activities are listed below 1. 2023 ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting Date: October 29 - November 1, 2023 Location: St. Louis, MO Title: Assessing Agronomic and Environmental Sustainability of Sorghum-Cotton Rotation in the West Texas High Plains Authors: Yusa Ichinose, Mukesh Kumar Mehla, Alondra Cruz, Juliana Maria Espindola Lima, Dinesh Kumar Saini, Mayank Pratap Singh Bangari, Guliana Muccioli, Impa Somayanda, Glen Ritchie, and S.V. Krishna Jagadish 2. Agricultural Water Sustainability Summit (AWSS) Date: August 7-9, 2024 Location: Lubbock, TX Title: Assessing Agronomic and Environmental Sustainability of Sorghum-Cotton Rotation Versus Continuous Cotton Cropping Authors: Yusa Ichinose, Mukesh Kumar Mehla, Glen Ritchie, and S.V. Krishna Jagadish 3. 2024 ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting Date: November 10-13, 2024 Location: San Antonio, TX Title: Assessing Agronomic and Environmental Sustainability of Sorghum-Cotton Rotation Versus Continuous Cotton Cropping Authors: Yusa Ichinose, Mukesh Kumar Mehla, Juliana Maria Espindola Lima, Dinesh Kumar Saini, Mayank Pratap Singh Bangari, Alondra Cruz, Lee Fischel, Teja Saddapalli, Kirti Bardhan, Paul Green, Seth Cope, Josh Massey, Impa Somayanda, Glen Ritchie, and S.V. Krishna Jagadish How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Yes there have been different events that the importance of considering sorghum in crop rotation has been disseminated to the producers and regional stakeholders to ensure we sustain the soil health and maintain agriculture in the cotton dominated west Texas region. 19th Annual TAWC Field Day was held on August 29, 2024 at the farm of Loyd and Angela Arthur, in Ralls, Crosby County, TX. Approximately 50 producers, crop consultants and researchers were in attendance and the importance of rotating sorghum with cotton was discussed along with other topics. These events are an opportunity for local producers to share experience with up-to-date irrigation technology, production practices and ways to improve and sustain their operations. Sorghum Field Day was held September 11, 2024, at the Texas Tech Research Farm at New Deal attracted approximately 100 participants. Several presentations were made by TTU Plant and Soil Science faculty, staff and students. These highlighted grain sorghum production and related issues, including using grain sorghum in rotation with cotton. The 11th Annual TAWC Water College conference was held on January 22, 2025, at the Lubbock Civic Center. Several speakers covered topics relevant to producers including available USDA-NRCS programs, crop insurance, water resources and land use, agricultural water research and farm sustainability, where the findings from the project was presented by the student Ms. Yusa Ichinose. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Objective 1 Trials over two years were successfully completed on the research farm and rotation tested on producer field. Harsh production years resulted in significantly lower yield than expected in cotton and the producer did not make profit on cotton but made more profit by bailing the sorghum instead of grain, which indicated alternate market under this rotation system, especially under extremely harsh years. Goanna Ag technology for soil moisture detection under deeper layers were installed on research and producer fields and helped producers to plan irrigation based on soil moisture availability on a temporal basis throughout the growing seasons. Higher cotton yields due to increased water availability were shown in both continuous cotton and sorghum-cotton rotations, and the rotation treatments had lower cotton yields than seen in continuous cotton. There were no significant differences in cotton quality due to the irrigation or rotation treatment. Crop rotations often display other soil and production benefits, such as more diverse and greater soil microbial populations and weed, insect and disease suppression. However, these soil and plant health benefits do not always result in significant yield benefits and is hard to capture differences in such short-term rotation studies where we had just two very contrasting years. We recommend having crop rotational studies for longer duration to ensure that different aspects of the rotation are well captured. In addition, the need to capture additional benefits such as water infiltration or retention and weed pressure changes are other aspects that needs to be considered to capture other potential benefits and not necessarily just yield. Objective 2 Both crop and irrigation treatments shaped soil bacterial microbiome across both producer and university trials. On producer field, cotton tended to support lower microbiome diversity than sorghum under low irrigation scenarios but greater levels under higher irrigation, while microbiome diversity and community structure under sorghum remained consistent between irrigation levels. On the university research farm, we observed that the soil bacterial microbiome under cotton was more responsive to irrigation level than sorghum, but fewer differences were observed based on crop type. Although cotton can support greater microbial diversity under high irrigation scenarios, this is not a condition that soils are likely to experience in future years as irrigation resources decline and drought becomes more frequent, especially in water scarce west Texas. In general, soil microbiomes under sorghum appeared to be more consistent regardless of irrigation level compared to cotton. Project findings support the use of sorghum as a rotational crop to support soil health and microbiomes, particularly under limited irrigation conditions. Objective 3 Although the limited irrigated cotton used less water, the reduction in yield and the increase in the custom field operations created more variable costs, making profitability much less than the irrigated field. Total gross margin on the dryland sorghum was positive, at $233/acre. Although the grain sorghum crop failed, the producer made positive profit because he was able to bale and sell hay. The fully irrigated cotton had an overall higher sustainability score compared to the limited irrigation and dryland site. The high irrigation treatment resulted in increased yield and increased production efficiency, which resulted in a more positive sustainability footprint compared to dryland production. Since grain sorghum was not harvested in 2023 due to the extremely harsh weather, it was difficult to determine the benefit from the rotation, however, the rotation does appear to have increased cotton yield in 2024. Objective 4 The 11th Annual TAWC Water College conference was held in January, 2024, at the Lubbock Civic Center, 150 attendees including producers to industry to academia were updated of the findings through a poster presentation by the MS student Ms. Yusa Ichionose. The Sorghum Field Day was held September 11, 2024, at the Texas Tech Research Farm at New Deal attracted approximately 100 participants. Several presentations were made by TTU Plant and Soil Science faculty, staff and students. These highlighted grain sorghum production and related issues, including using grain sorghum in rotation with cotton.

Publications


    Progress 04/01/23 to 03/31/24

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Due to continuous cotton production in west Texas region, the soil health is deteriorating and to ensure the sustainability of profitable crop production in the region, the project focus was on strengthening the sorghum-cotton rotation. The primary target auidence were the regional producers and crop consultants, who would help to transfer the message. To reach this auidence, sorghum-cotton rotation trial was carried out at both the research farm and also on one of the producer field. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Three graduate students were involved in this research where Yusa Ichinose (agronomy), Mim Mahjabin Ferdaous (microbial dynamics) and Christopher Albus (economics) where provided multi-disciplinary research experience and trained across different research domains related to the sorghum-cotton rotation. Christopher Albus completed his masters and will graduated in Summer 2025. Yusa Ichinose will graduate in Fall 2025 while Ms. Ferdaous has opted to continue working on this topic as a part of her PhD desseration. They were provided opportunities to present their work at scientific conference 1. 2023 ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting Date: October 29 - November 1, 2023 Location: St. Louis, MO Title: Assessing Agronomic and Environmental Sustainability of Sorghum-Cotton Rotation in the West Texas High Plains Authors: Yusa Ichinose, Mukesh Kumar Mehla, Alondra Cruz, Juliana Maria Espindola Lima, Dinesh Kumar Saini, Mayank Pratap Singh Bangari, Guliana Muccioli, Impa Somayanda, Glen Ritchie, and S.V. Krishna Jagadish How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? Objective 1 Harsh environment conditions in 2023 resulted in significantly lower yield than expected in cotton and the producer did not make profit on cotton but made more profit by bailing the sorghum instead of grain, which indicated alternate market under this rotation system, especially under extremely harsh years. Goanna Ag technology for soil moisture detection under deeper layers were installed on research and producer fields and helped producers to plan irrigation based on soil moisture availability on a temporal basis throughout the growing seasons. Objective 2 On producer field, cotton tended to support lower microbiome diversity than sorghum under low irrigation scenarios but greater levels under higher irrigation, while microbiome diversity and community structure under sorghum remained consistent between irrigation levels. On the university research farm, we observed that the soil bacterial microbiome under cotton was more responsive to irrigation level than sorghum, but fewer differences were observed based on crop type. Objective 3 Although the limited irrigated cotton used less water, the reduction in yield and the increase in the custom field operations created more variable costs, making profitability much less than the irrigated field. Total gross margin on the dryland sorghum was positive, at $233/acre. Although the grain sorghum crop failed, the producer made positive profit because he was able to bale and sell hay. Objective 4 The team did not have results to address this objective

    Publications