Aspects of this project were delivered in collaboration with the GRDC project BGC00001 “Raising awareness of drift reduction techniques.”

Workshop Program for Cotton Growers and Their Neighbours (co-funded by GRDC)

A total of 53 application and drift management workshops were delivered to 1046 cotton and grain growers, with independent evaluation showing more than 80% of the participants surveyed had changed one or more practices within 3-6 months of attending the workshop.

Exit Surveys showed that 98% of participants were at least satisfied with the workshop (venue, timing, resources, presenter), 83 % were at least very satisfied, and 17% suggested the workshop exceeded their expectations.

95% of participants said they obtained new information by attending the workshop and would recommend the workshop to people they know.

A further 6 workshops were provided to 103 advisors, and 6 workshops for trainers were delivered to more than 154 participants (an additional 2 of the trainer workshops were run in conjunction with the GRDC project).

The external cash and in-kind contributions to this project were 1.34 times greater than the CRDC cash contribution.

Application and Drift Management Trial Program

The workshop program was supported by 7 application trials, with the data obtained used to modify training materials and was presented to growers and advisors at industry meetings and updates. 3 Trials resulted in a change to the WeedSeeker® setup by the manufacturer, 4 separate efficacy based trials demonstrated that coarse droplets do provide equivalent efficacy for many types herbicide applications, and that the use of coarse droplets was effective in fallow situations for phenoxy and glyphosate products. Trials indicated that in wider row situations (1.5m) efficacy could also be achieved with Roundup Ready Herbicide, however the use of extremely coarse droplets for over the top Roundup Ready® applications had the potential to reduce efficacy in 1m row, solid plant situations.

A single study evaluating relatively new techniques for measuring spray drift (comparing daytime and night time spraying) highlighted the risks associated with night spraying. The methodology used for the spray drift study using a range of cations and mass spectrometry (in place of traditional fluorometric methodologies) proved to be a useful and relatively low cost method for estimating drift potential under differing environmental conditions.

The results of this study were passed on to the National Working Committee for Pesticide Application for further consideration.

Take Home Messages

Minimising spray drift continues to be a challenge for all agricultural industries. The cotton industry, through its long term support for training and extension in drift management has been able to act as a catalyst for establishing a national program for delivering the application and drift management workshops developed by BGC. GRDC will be funding the delivery of this program nationally to grain growers for the 2012-2015 period.

The challenge for the cotton industry will be to maintain its status as an industry leader in extending information related to application and drift management.