Improved methods of assessing crop nutrient status in early season cotton will allow growers to remediate their crops and improve fertilizer management practices. By optimising the nutrition of cotton crops, growers can avoid nutritional stresses that can reduce the economic viability of commercial cotton growing. Monitoring nutrient status of individual cotton crops will allow precise fertilizer recommendations to be formulated. Soil and plant tissue tests have been available to the industry for many years but this technology has not been widely accepted because of the time consumed in sampling procedures, cost, inexperience in interpreting analytical results and variations in laboratory procedures and reporting of results. Growers often use soil testing as their only indication of crop nutrition requirements. Plant tissue testing offers a better indication of crop nutrition than soil testing, but it has not been adopted in commercial cotton production. NIR technology has the potential to facilitate and reduce the costs of nutrient analysis of cotton plant material. Similarly, development of the SPAD chlorophyll meter to allow in-field assessment of crop N nutrition will reduce response time for making N fertilizer management decisions.

Cropping systems experiments are currently being used to evaluate the sustainability of various cotton systems. An important component is the inclusion of legume crops for grain or green manuring. This assists in maintaining desirable levels of soil organic matter, with improved soil quality, soil N reserves and availability of other plant nutrients. Legume cropping provides direct economic benefits to growers through reduced N fertilizer requirement and indirect long-term benefits through enhanced sustainability achieved by remediation of soil chemical and physical properties. Management practices which reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers and which conserve and improve our soil resources are environmentally responsible and ecologically sound.