The annual Cotton Grower Seed Preview will appear in the October/November issue, but USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has released its Cotton Varieties Planted in 2010, and it’s more than worth a quick look.

Bayer CropScience captured slightly over half of the nation’s cotton-seed market share when you combine its FiberMax and Stoneville brands. FiberMax alone captured 39 percent of the market, the highest of any seed brand. Stoneville captured 11.2 percent of the market.

Deltapine finished second with 25.6 percent of the market, followed by Dow’s PhytoGen brand (12.1), Stoneville, Americot (6.2), All-Tex (2.7)and Dyna-Gro (1.5).

FiberMax’s FM 9058F was the nation’s top variety with an 10.36 percent share, replacing Deltapine’s “Hall of Fame” DP 555 BR, which is no longer available. FM 9058 was also the top variety planted in the Southwest with a 18.67 percent share. But 555 – which had to be bought and paid for in 2009 to be planted in 2010 – still captured a 16.8 percent share in the Southeast, good enough for first place there, and 4.3 percent nationally.

PhytoGen PHY 375 WRF was the second most popular variety nationally with a 7.72 percent share.

Regionally, FiberMax was number one in the Southwest in market share with 63.78 percent. FiberMax had the six top varieties in the Southwest. Stoneville was number one in the Mid-South (38.86) and Deltapine number one in the Southeast (51.6).

Of the newest Deltapine varieties, DP 0912 B2RF finished with a national market share of 3.68 percent. DP 0912 was also third in the Southeast (11.47), giving Deltapine two of the top three varieties in the Southeast.

The number one variety planted in the Mid-South was PHY 375 WRF with a 17.08 percent share. It was also second in the Southeast at 15.62 percent.

In the Far West, PhytoGen 805 RF was the number one Pima variety with a 58.1 percent market share, followed by PhytoGen PHY 800 (12.7) and Deltapine’s DP 340. Deltapine led in total market share in the Far West with 33.69 percent of the market.