The purpose of the travel was to attend and present results of research into plant based measures of irrigation scheduling at the ASA/CSSA/SSSA International Annual Conference in Long Beach, California. This was meant to promote Australian cotton industry and research using an international platform. The travel was also to meet with collaborators, Drs James Mahan and Paxton Payton, at USDA, Lubbock, Texas for continued work on improving Australian irrigation strategies whilst understudying the American system.

Some of the outcomes of the travel were

a. Research result was delivered and well received by the scientific community judging by the number of visitors to the poster session and questions asked

b. Australian cotton industry and research were well promoted at an international level

c. The scientific exchange to USDA, Lubbock, Texas enabled improvement of existing synergies in our research collaborations with partners in the USA

d. Advanced exploratory data analysis, presentation and interpretations using data from irrigation experiments conducted in both the U.S. and Australia were conducted.

b) other highlights

At the conference, it was apparent that the Australian cotton industry is at the forefront of canopy temperature based furrow irrigation scheduling. Also although the USA and Australian cotton industries have similar challenges in terms of scheduling irrigation, the Australian system, requires a very different approach at fine tuning irrigation schedule.