The past year has been a challenging one for the Cotton R&D Corporation. The appointment of five new Directors and a new Chair in November was possibly the most significant change the Corporation has seen since being established in October 1990. Despite this, and thanks to the efforts of Corporation staff and all directors new, continuing and retiring, the transition has been smooth. The Board is now looking forward to continuing to build the research program on the strong foundation developed during the past 10 years. The changes to the Board membership and advice from the Federal Government in December regarding revised priorities for rural Research and Development Corporations gave the Corporation an opportunity to revisit its major planning document, the Strategic Plan 1998-2003. Extensive consultation with industry has shown that the content of the Plan is sound and will deliver genuine benefits to the Australian cotton industry. In order to meet its obligations to all stakeholders, the Corporation has revised the structure of the Plan into a more clearly defined Outcome/Outputs framework. The revised framework will allow the Corporation to improve and simplify its planning and reporting. Australia’s cotton industry supports many thousands of people in rural and regional areas and directly contributes more than $1.5 billion to the national economy. Our role is to enable the industry to continue to be strong and profitable for the long-term, by addressing issues of natural resource management for sustainability, issues of production for profitability and issues of positive and negative off-farm impacts for the community. The Corporation remains focussed on reducing dependence on traditional pesticides, continuing the development of Integrated Pest Management principles, improving water use efficiency and developing of sustainable farming systems.