Premier Cotton Education - Disease and Nematodes

Cotton Premier Program was developed to meet cotton educational goals and resolve issues cotton producers faced over the last 5 years. These issues are identified by local producer committees annually and compared to issues identified by agents, specialist, researchers, and commodity partners located in the Panhandle and South Plains region of Texas.  The first step was to identify groups of issues such as; Weed Management, Fertility, Varieties and Pre-Plant Considerations, Harvest Preparations and Technologies, Soil and Water Relationships, Insect Pests, and Marketing/Economic Risk Management.  Program Indicators for each group of issues were developed to use for planning educational programs and evaluate the effectiveness of the delivery of these program topics.  These are updated annually by everyone mentioned above.  Agents plan a variety of methods and deliveries to address the focused area of interest and need in their counties and evaluate each program delivered.

Evaluation scan forms are utilized at each county, district, and regional cotton program to evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge gained and intention to adopt technologies and change behaviors. These results have been compiled for the past 5 years in each issue group listed above.  General information on acres, estimated return, and effectiveness is also measure and accumulated with each form.  The posters represent the efforts of Extension education in the region for the past 5 years and allows us to evaluate our impact and make decisions related to direction and determination of effective Extension Cotton programming.