Due to the large percentage of Boll disorders and diseases that have occurred in Central Queensland Cotton production system in recent years, growers and advisers are attempting to find some answers to eliminate the risk of these occurring. The following project is a concept which is taken from the canopy management concept that a reduction of the canopy density can reduce the humidity in the crop, thus alleviating potential boll disorder conditions in wet seasons. This project looked at reduction of the plant stand within a linear metre of row to study the effect of the increase or decrease in plant densities on yield and boll disorders.

The season was an extremely wet season, at the time of boll opening and at picking, which was perfect for the results of this trial. However, due to some shortcomings of the experimental design and procedure, there was no significant difference in the trial, despite there being some areas where, with further research, may have some potential trends. In addition to the extremely wet finish to the season, a December hail storm heavily impacted on the crop which also may have affected the results negatively.

In order to completely understand this concept, the trial needs to be re-visited and conducted in such a way to alleviate any of the shortcomings of this pilot study and to ensure that the results and data are such that they can begin to provide a picture of what may be causing some of these events. Climatic conditions should be recorded within treatments in future trials, as this will assist in identifying what parameters are causing these disorder events. There is a limited amount of information available to the industry on how these disorders can be controlled or mitigated and therefore more research should be conducted in line with these ideas to assist the industry in combating these problems.