Turning the tables on cotton's $200 million pest.

According to Extension estimates, root-knot nematodes cost U.S. cotton producers as much as 628,600 bales per year, or $200 million if cotton is 65 cents per pound. Austin Warbington, a cotton producer from Vienna, Georgia, said most fields in his area have root-knot nematodes, so resistant varieties provide a major benefit to him as well. "We can plant these varieties on fields with root-knot nematodes, and it's almost like planting a rotational crop because we eliminate up to 90% of the nematode population", Warbington said. [Extracted from the article]