The 2014 Cotton Growing Practices survey was conducted by Roth Rural on behalf of CRDC. It gathers valuable information about cotton farming practices to give a greater understanding of the industry’s current practices and performance in relation to a number of key areas for the 2013-14 cotton crop, and so that trends can be monitored over time. This survey particularly focused on weeds, climate, carbon, riparian areas, irrigation and irrigation pumps. Information was also gathered about cotton yields and fibre quality for the season and grower perceptions of CottonInfo.

CRDC and Cotton Seed Distributors (CSD) commissioned Eco Logical Australia to undertake a review and analysis of the extent of current cotton production and investigation within Australia, as well as opportunities for expansion. Opportunities were identified through a Geographical Information System (GIS) based spatial analysis, testing commonly held metrics and assumptions pertaining to the limits of cotton production. This report contains two volumes - a report of the findings of this research, and spatial analysis and mapping.

The Australian cotton industry has a 21 year history of independent environmental assessments, demonstrating its commitment to monitoring and improving the industry’s environmental performance. The initial assessment, conducted in 1991, saw the cotton industry become the first major agricultural industry undertake such a task, and in 2012, the Third Environment Assessment was conducted to continue documenting performance and practice change.

The Australian Cotton Industry: Third Environmental Assessment made six recommendations for the industry to improve its environmental performance. These recommendations, and the key findings from the Assessment, are outlined in the Assessment Report.

This report outlines CRDC's key priority areas for 'futures research' investment, based on extensive consultation with stakeholders

The Measuring Sustainability in Cotton Farming Systems: Towards a Guidance Framework provides an overview of critical sustainability issues for cotton growing and recommends a set of indicators to assess and measure progress against these.

The report was published by the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) Expert Panel on Social, Environmental and Economic Performance of Cotton Production and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in April 2015. CRDC R&D Manager Allan Williams is the Chair of the ICAC panel and co-author of this report.

The indicators in the report cover environmental (pest and pesticide management; water management; soil management; land use and biodiversity; and climate change), economic (economic viability, poverty reduction and food security; economic risk management) and social (labour rights and standards; occupational health and safety; equity and gender; and farmer organisations) issues that affect cotton growing countries the world over.

The report references sustainability programs run by cotton growing countries around the world, including Australia's own myBMP program, and the Better Cotton Initiative, of which Australia is a member.

In the Murrumbidgee, with the rapid uptake of cotton production there has been a trend to continuous production systems, with some farmers doing as many as 5 consecutive cotton crops. With the intensity of production and a move to bigger machinery, particularly 40t pickers that are commonly used when the ground is damp, there is an increase in the amount of compaction. This is resulting in changes in the crop physiology as well as a tightening of irrigation intervals due to a decrease in the water holding capacity of soil and shallowing rooting depth that the plants are able to achieve.

This project aimed to demonstrate the differences between standard and controlled traffic practices (3m centres) and water infiltration rate and irrigation practices on farms in the Murrumbidgee catchment. As there are currently have no farms moving to controlled traffic, it will be about demonstrating to the grower soil properties that are present in the continuous cropping system we currently have, as well as bringing someone with the experience of switching to controlled traffic to showcase the benefits seen on that farm. The first season of BG III will also mean reduced tillage from pupae busting enabling monitoring of expected increased infiltration from business-as-usual scenarios under BGII.

The researcher was able to get some good data from a number of different sites that have had different management. This coupled with infield probes has resulted is some solid information as the compaction that is happening in our region and the effects that they are having on water infiltration.The engagment of Dr Michael Braunack from the CSIRO as part of the local field day to discuss what was happening to local soil, and look at the option of controlled traffic. The information that gathered has resulted in a good base for further work in the local region.

The spring edition of CRDC's magazine, Spotlight, has a focus on sustainability, in line with the industry's current focus on setting new sustainability targets. Some of the issues tackled in this edition include off-target spray drift, nitrogen efficiency, soil health and pesticide use.

The Australian Rural Leadership Foundation was established in 1992 based on the premise that developing leaders in rural, regional and remote Australia could influence change across organisations, industries as a whole, and rural communities in general.

The ARLF exists to develop leaders for rural, regional and remote Australia. We support the development of leaders for the greater good – no matter where they live or work. The Foundation takes an ethical approach, challenges assumptions and seeks to respectfully influence change for the greater good.

Our flagship program is the Australian Rural Leadership Program (ARLP). This program has been running since our inception and we will commence Course 23 in 2016. We currently have over 650 ARLP graduates from throughout Australia. Other educational programs are shorter in length and are either targeted to a specific leadership level or client-focused (organized by a client for their sector). All graduates become life-long members of the Foundation’s network which now numbers over 1,000 leaders.

As part of our existing effort we regularly assess and evaluate all our programs. However given the Foundation’s educational philosophy that emphasises people-development through values-based leadership learning, the impacts are difficult to quantify in a simplified manner. So while our existing evaluation measures can provide insight into the impact of our programs on individuals and from an ARLF viewpoint, they do not provide an expression of impact that is easy to communicate to third party investors and other interested parties.

The broad objective of the longitudinal evaluation is to identify the influence of the ARLP and other Foundation programs upon the leadership of program graduates and, consequently, the impact of their leadership within regional, remote and rural Australia (and beyond) over time. The ARLF has a unique position relative to other leadership development courses with its focus

on RRR Australia. The ARLF has over 25 years developed a flagship program, the ARLP that is

premised upon two approaches to leadership development – that it is experientially based and

is premised upon reflective practice. Eight core principles develop from this philosophy, each

associated with a set of leadership dispositions or capabilities. The aim of each of the ARLF

programs seeks to develop/enhance in individuals these dispositions and capabilities.

This project part funded the purchase of a new HVI to be used for testing fibre samples from CSIRO’s cotton breeding program as well as most research projects at ACRI and other locations such as Canberra and Kununurra. As such the project provided part funding of enabling equipment to ensure up to date techniques are used for critical measurements of fibre quality in research. The new Uster HVI was part of CSIRO Plant Industry’s fibre testing laboratory which also contained a Shirley Fineness Maturity Tester and air conditioning required for such laboratories.

The new instrument was commissioned for the 2005 harvest and has completed three harvests to this time, with an average of 25,000 samples tested each season.

The instrument has ensured modern testing and fibre quality data has been successfully applied to research in a number of subject areas from breeding to agronomy and pest management.

Stable transformation is an essential tool for molecular biologists workingon non-model organsims. The ability to introduce and express genes of choice in an organism provides means to investigate important molecular questions such as gene function, biochemcial pathway analysis, reporter gene studies and developmental process. my PhD studies have focussed on the transformation of the pest Helcoverpa armigera with the reporter gene EGFP(enhanced green fluorescent protein). There are essentially two parts to the transformation: 1) DNA delivery and 2)targetr gene integration. Biolistics is a technique for DNA delivery that involves coating microscopic gold particles with the DNA of choice and accelerating them at high velocity into the cells. Biolistics has been widely used to transform many kinds of plant tissue, and has had mixed success transforming Drosophilia embryos. Extensive attempts to adapt biolistics to transform H.armigera embryos proved fruitless, with too many technical hurdles to overcome. these difficulties led me to use microinjection delivery of DNA to embryos. Compared to biolistics, microinjection is a lower-throughput technique delivering DNA to individual embryos, however this method is well established, with none of the hurdles raised by biolistics. Results for the microinjection were encouraging, with a high frequency of transient EGFP expression and the generation of two putative EGFP stably transformed H.armigera lines. Following DNA delivery, integration of target genes into insect genomes is commonly mediated by transposon-based gene movement. i used the class II transposan piggyBac to facilitate the movement of the ECFP reporter gene into the genomes of H.armigera embryos aas a visual proof of integration.