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This document provides a brief outline of the projects CRDC has invested in for 2026-27 (current as of June 2026).
CRDC's Annual Operational Plan for 2025-26 (AOP): the fourth annual operational plan under the CRDC's Strategic RD&E Plan 2023-28.
The 2026-27 Australian Cotton Production Manual is a critical reference tool for cotton growers. The manual is a one-stop-shop for growers, outlining all the various decisions that need to be made on-farm in preparation for, and during, cotton production. The manual provides an understanding of cotton physiology, and discusses important considerations for both productivity and profitability. The Australian Cotton Production Manual is published by CRDC and CottonInfo and is updated every second year to incorporate the latest research and improvements in industry best practice. The 2026-27 edition is current for the 2026 and 2026 years.
The Winter 2026 edition of Spotlight focuses on how Australia’s cotton industry is managing risk on farm and building the capability to deal with the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Disease management is a major focus, with the Australian Cotton Disease Collaboration (ACDC) expanding diagnostic services, building a national pathogen collection and improving early detection tools. From faster on‑farm diagnostics to spore trapping and regional surveillance, this work is helping growers identify issues earlier and make more informed management decisions.
Resilience is also front and centre. A new Future Drought Fund project is establishing 25 on‑farm trial sites across NSW, Qld and the NT to test practical approaches to drought preparedness, recovery and water use efficiency. At the same time, new nitrogen work is giving growers the chance to test ways to optimise fertiliser use without compromising yield.
Innovation will be on show at the 2026 Australian Cotton Conference, where 11 CRDC‑supported projects will feature in Innovation Alley. These projects are tackling key challenges such as nitrogen efficiency, pest management and weed detection, giving growers the chance to see what’s coming next and help shape which ideas move forward.
Across this edition, you’ll also find updates on disease work in northern regions, sustainability, data and decision tools, and the latest research being tested on farm. Together, these stories reflect a focus on practical trials, grower involvement and applying research where it counts – in the field.
Soil moisture assessment is a critical input to improve irrigation scheduling, water use efficiency, and sustainability in broadacre agriculture. However, there can be significant variability in soil moisture across fields and existing sensors typically only measure a single point. Multiple soil moisture sensing technologies have been demonstrated that enable spatial sensing, for example, the Geonics EM38 Mk2 which uses electromagnetic induction and the Skaha Labs P-band Polarimeter which uses P-band polarimetric radar. Both devices represent advanced tools for non-invasive soil moisture assessment, and have different sensing mechanisms and deployment methods, i.e. the EM38 is towed over a field while the polarimetric radar can be drone mounted. This research, supported by a CRDC Summer Research Scholarship, aims to evaluate and compare the performance of these sensors. The project focuses on how effectively each device detects and maps soil moisture under real-world conditions, particularly in the high-clay Vertosol soils of cotton-growing areas in the Darling Downs region and identifying the practical benefits and limitations of each sensor. The study involves field deployment, data collection, and comparative analysis of spatial resolution, depth sensitivity, accuracy, ease of use, and responsiveness to variable moisture levels. Findings from this research will support more informed decisions about soil moisture monitoring tools in Australian cotton systems.
The small project was the capital investment for 2 Licor portable N2O lasers which provide continuous monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions from cotton fields in real time. These were delivered to QUT prior to the 2025/26 season and deployed at two locations - Narrabri (NSW) and Jondaryan (QLD) connected to QUT automated chambers.
Australian cotton production is characterised by high yielding, high quality cropping systems, earning in excess of $2.5b in export revenues annually. Crops are grown under an expanding scope of climatic conditions and diverse agronomic management practices, driven by broad industry use of transgenic technologies. Abiotic stressors and their management are key drivers of lint quality and yield. Australian cotton production systems are predominantly driven by water availability and the compounding impact of deficit on other system constraints. A key industry challenge is to minimise such climate-induced year to year production variability and maintain existing lint quality repute. An industry-led strategic imperative also exists to significantly increase productivity and profitability on cotton farms within 5 years, being partly achieved through both optimising cotton farming systems and protecting them from biotic threats and environmental stresses. This project aimed to address these strategic requisites by increasing crucial independent research capacity and capabilities for applied cotton systems research. The project aimed to investigate responsive agronomic practices for irrigated, rain-fed and abiotically stressed crops by leveraging plant growth regulator chemistry and applying modern sensing technologies and data analytics. This project continued research into the use of crop growth regulators seeking to modify or support crop growth to assist development of novel agronomic approaches to improve production resilience.
This study, funded by Natural Heritage Trust Funding grant “Water Quality in Gwydir Valley Watercourses (Moree)”, investigated use by waterbirds of on-farm wetlands (mainly irrigation storages, but also other artificial wetlands) on irrigated cotton farms in the Lower Gwydir Valley.
On-farm storages now cover c.120 km2, about 1.13% of the landscape, and constitute 45% of the total area of natural and artificial wetlands in the Lower Gwydir Valley.
Between September 1999 and July 2001, 23 surveys were undertaken of 19 on-farm wetlands on 9 cotton farms. During the surveys, we recorded numbers of birds present on each wetland and any signs of breeding. Wetland characteristics that were recorded included the species-richness and seedling production of their seed bank.
In all 23 surveys, a grand total was counted of 42,495 birds, of over 45 species. No species was detected that has not been recorded on the natural wetlands of the Lower Gwydir Valley, and several of the rarer species known from those natural wetlands (e.g. brolga, black-necked stork, comb-crested jacana) were not seen on the on-farm wetlands. Four of the 8 waterbird species listed on Schedule 2 of the NSW Threatened Species Act (magpie goose, blue-billed duck, one freckled duck and one Australasian bittern) were detected on on-farm wetlands, but only magpie goose regularly, in low numbers and breeding.
The recorded waterbird community on the on-farm wetlands was dominated by ducks, geese and swans (anatids), which constituted 59% of the birds recorded. Those were followed by: pelican, darter and cormorants (pelecaniforms: 18%); herons, egrets, spoonbills and ibises (ciconiiforms: 12%); and coot, moorhen and swamphen (rallids: 6.5%). The four most abundantly counted individual species were all ducks.The wetlands supported no or only few waders, snipe and cryptic crake and rail species.
Total numbers of counted waterbirds varied from count to count and year to year, without obvious seasonal regularity. Numbers of some waterbird species on on-farm wetlands fluctuated rapidly and profoundly; others were more stable in numbers. Variations in numbers suggest that the waterbirds were highly mobile, using on-farm wetlands as part of the dispersed system of wetlands in the Lower Gwydir Valley.
We found consistent and significant differences between the sampled on-farm wetlands (even within a farm) in the numbers, densities and composition of the waterbird communities they carried. The 5 most bird-rich on-farm wetlands carried 10-30 times as many birds as the 5 most bird-poor wetlands.
On-farm wetlands differed in the predictability with which species-groups of waterbirds could be found on them (called their fidelity). Nine of the 19 wetlands had a predictability of 1-in-4 or better of finding any species-group, whereas 5 of the wetlands had average fidelities of less than 1-in-8.
Average waterbird species-group fidelity increased with waterbird density on on-farm wetlands. However, individual waterbird species differed strongly in their fidelity scores. Some, such as whistle-ducks, were very numerous but occurred only irregularly; thus they had low fidelities. Others, such as black duck, were persistently present and showed high fidelity.
Our data showed that waterbirds in general, and anatids and rallids in particular, were significantly more numerous and predictably present on those on-farm wetlands:
Cormorants, darters and pelicans occurred predictably only on on-farm wetlands with numerous trees, usually dead ones, in the water.
Very few waterbirds bred on the on-farm wetlands. Some colonial, tree-platform-nesting waterbirds (such as darter, cormorants, spoonbills, and a few herons and ibises) nested on some wetlands with standing trees in the water, in each year of the study. However, numbers of nests per wetland were always low (<60). Some nesting terminated when water level was drawn down. Even fewer waterbirds nesting on the ground or on aquatic vegetation or in tree hollows (e.g. ducks) produced detected clutches of young.
Extrapolating from our survey results to the whole system of on-farm wetlands in the Lower Gwydir Valley suggests that, although the on-farm wetlands constitute 45% of the Lower Gwydir Valley’s mapped wetland area (excluding those wetland areas flooding naturally but briefly), they support on average 24,000 waterbird individuals, probably only 1-5% of the Valley’s waterbird community and less than 0.5% of waterbird nesting numbers.
However, if characteristics of at least some on-farm wetlands could be modified, without unacceptably reducing their usefulness for irrigation, to produce wetlands that are more diverse, more shallowly sloping, and with more aquatic vegetation and trees, then the widely dispersed system of on-farm wetlands could contribute substantially more than they do now to the conservation of a diverse waterbird community in the Lower Gwydir Valley.
This project found that infield thermal cameras could accurately measure canopy temperature for irrigation management for earlier growth stages than previous single point canopy temperature sensing technology. Further to this, this project demonstrated the commercial scale deployment of a machine vision tool for crop management. Two media releases were developed during this project to promote the outcomes for industry.
This gap analysis was based on information gathered directly from a wide range of stakeholders across the cotton industry and its value chain. Insights from growers, advisers, banks, brands and government were combined with targeted desktop analysis to ensure findings reflect both on-farm experience and emerging market and regulatory expectations.
