Specialists Speaking

JARROD T. HARDKE STUTTGART, ARKANSAS Each year has its own set of problems, but the 2025 season was particularly unique. Seed shortages and finding a way to profit were the main topics leading up to planting. A seemingly favorable early spring...

TYLER MUSGROVE BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA As we close out the 2025 rice season, ratoon crop harvest has been recently completed across southwest Louisiana. With record low commodity prices and novel pest challenges, the value of the second crop is vital for...

WILL EUBANK MISSISSIPPI STATE, MISSISSIPPI Mississippi’s 2025 rice crop was one with many ups and downs. Overall, this year’s planted and failed acres totaled to 161,000 acres, which was 36,000 more than Mississippi’s last five-year average. Bolivar county led rice acres...

  BRUCE LINQUIST DAVIS, CALIFORNIA In California, 533,000 acres of rice were planted in 2025, which is the highest amount since 2016.Some of this increase in acreage was seen in San Joaquin County, which planted 15,000 acres in 2025. There has been...

MICHELLE LEINFELDER-MILES STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA Variety Trial: Delta rice acreage has been steadily increasing, and yields are comparable with the statewide average (Table 1). I estimate that Delta acreage approached, if not exceeded, 15,000 acres in 2025. To support the growing industry,...

Prevention is Key For disease control in rice, prevention and avoidance go a long way in minimizing our issues. This starts with cultivar selection, relying on those cultivars that provide the best disease packages for our needs. Luckily, we continue...

Insect Defense Insect control in Arkansas rice starts up front before the seed hits the ground. Rice water weevil and grape colaspis are our worrisome early season insect pests, and the below-ground damage they cause is difficult to combat. For years,...

Don’t Let Them Up The best weed control recommendation out there continues to be “don’t let them come up.” Overlapping residuals is the consistent theme of weed control recommendations in rice, especially for grasses. We certainly want to properly utilize burndown...

Don’t Run on Empty The saying goes, “a ¼ tank is better than an empty tank.” That’s going to be very appropriate for the 2025 growing season. In a year where nothing really pencils out, it’s going to be tempting...

I’d like to utilize my space this month to express my appreciation to all readers over the past three years who I’ve been contributing to Rice Farming magazine for. The Specialist Speaking column has been a regular for me...

Good with the Bad Strong yields have carried most of the chatter for the 2024 Arkansas rice season. An incredibly rapid early planting pace certainly had a great deal to do with it. Ultimately, yields appear to be challenging the...

Disease Management in California There are four main diseases that affect rice in California: blast, stem rot, smut, and aggregate sheath spot. I listed them from more to less important. While blast does not occur every year, it can be very...

Seeding Rate Work in Furrow-Irrigated Rice We recently wrapped up the “meeting season” circuit, where it seems like we speak about every other day on various research topics that we’ve been looking at throughout the year(s). While meeting season is...

Plan Ahead for Success Each year those reporting the most successful weed control programs continue to be those who focus on overlapping residuals. That, plus starting clean and putting the right chemistry / technology where it has the best chance...

Thoughts on Managing Nitrogen Fertilizer For the past three years, we have been doing research at the Rice Experiment Station on how to manage N fertilizer in a rice field when the previous year, the rice was in fallow. Here...