Crop Consultants Australia Inc (CCA) is the national association

covering agronomists working in the cotton industry throughout

NSW and Queensland. CCA commenced surveying its members

and their clients in 1982 in response to a need for reliable product

usage records (quantities) and forecasts of product requirements

for the following seasons, and to provide key indicators to

chemical manufacturers of usage trends. In previous years, surveys

have been conducted of both CCA consultants and cotton

growers; however, the 2009 survey involved 23 consultants with

questions about themselves and the growers they consult for.

OverwhelmingIy, respondents were independent consultants, with

two employed by resellers. Reports from seasons 08/09 and 09/10 are included in this projects Final Reports.

Survey results for the 2008-2009 season were conducted in May and June 2009. This season was still under

drought conditions, and it should be noted that limited water

would have affected a number of management decisions.

The 2009-2010 season qualitative survey marked the second year in which the survey

was conducted with cotton consultants rather than growers. A total of

34 consultants undertook the 2010 survey - almost 50% more than in

2009 - with questions about themselves as well as their grower clients'.

An estimated total of 182,000 hectares of irrigated and dryland

cotton were grown in the 2009-10 season (source: Cotton Australia,

Australion Cotton Production Forecast March 2010 Post Flood). The 34

consultants in the 2010 survey represented about 74% of the industry

hectares and 312 growers, who represented 38% of all 2009-10

growers (source: Monsanto). The surveyed hectares comprised

approximately 86% irrigated and 14% dryland.

Peak oil demands and declining oil reserves, increased greenhouse emissions and global warming

and economic drivers for operational and cost efficiencies promote energy efficiency as one of the

most important global issues. Meeting the demands of an expanding world population is becoming

increasingly difficult not only as the global climate changes but as further limits are placed on water,

land, energy and other resources. Rising energy costs are particularly acute for agriculture, which

relies on energy intensive process to produce necessary fertilisers and chemicals. Because cotton is

a highly mechanised and high-input crop which relies on diesel, fertilisers, chemicals, water and land,

meeting the energy challenge is particularly important to Australian cotton production.

Energy efficiency is an important consideration for agriculture both in terms of rising energy costs.

Australia’s electricity prices have increased by 80% in the last 5 years, which has far exceeded the

increases in consumer price index changes in the same period. It is projected that electricity prices in

Australia will further increase by another 30% in the next 2 years. Hence, there is increased

importance in quantifying energy use, as a step toward encouraging efficient energy use on the

farm.

The CRDC has previously funded the NCEA to conduct a desktop study of on-farm energy use for a

number of case study cotton farms to understand the range, costs and contributions of energy use

to cotton production and greenhouse gas emissions. The results from this work showed that energy

use varies depending on the cropping enterprise and the farming system and that there are

significant opportunities to reduce energy and costs. While direct on-farm energy use is a small

component of the total energy used in the production of cotton lint, any savings made flow directly

to the grower. The largest energy consumption in field to factory production of finished lint is the fertilisers used in cotton production, which is the on-farm indirect energy use shown in figure 3,

below.

A more detailed study undertaken by the NCEA on a large cotton farm in the Gwydir Valley identified

significant reductions in energy resulting from the adoption of reduced tillage systems. The study

showed that the adoption of a minimum tillage system had reduced energy costs (and greenhouse

emissions) by 12% since 2000 and developing a “near zero till” system had the potential to reduce

this to 24% less than 2000 energy costs.

It is evident from this work that there is substantial scope to improve energy use efficiency in cotton

production systems, but to enable more growers to identify where they can improve, further

development of tools, processes and human capacity is required.

Energy efficiency may be one of the fastest, cheapest and easiest ways to cut farmers energy

expenditure and greenhouse gas emissions. Measuring or estimating energy use across an

enterprise is the most important first step in this process because it identifies the major energy

consuming operations across the enterprise and hence defines where the largest gains may be

made. This same process can be used to assess the net worth of any changes.

Case study of Mungindi farm managing Riparian vegetation for multiple benefits

During my two visits to the emerging cotton areas in southern NSW early January and early March, 2012, I was able to meet with all but three of the key people supplying agronomic advice to the cotton area. Two of the three, Allen Jones (Agronomic Business Solutions) and Joran Millyard (MIA Rural), I was able to have a long phone conversation with. Danielle McKay (farm agronomist with Peter Touhey Farm), I was unable to contact.

I had meetings with Heath McWhirter, Junice McCosker and John Ronan (all from Elders), Peter Hill (Yenda Prods), Brett Hay and mark Zanatta(MIA Rural), Jemma Maslem (Twynam, Gundaline) and tom Webb (agronomic business Solutions). I was able to catch up with Patrick McInnes from Hillston, who is a private consultant, whose major client is Harris Farms.

These meetings all revolved around IPM earliness, PIX management and late insects. In the case of Yenda Prods, we had a formal office meeting in the mnorning, followed by a farm inspection in the afternoon. In most cases, we met with the grower and most of his neighbours.

Elders held a shed meeting las tMonday with 25 growers turning up. Points of discussion were IPM, Boll development and late insects.

I was fortunate on both occasions to have time with Kieran O'Keefe (District Agronomist, Coleambally). Kieran is doing the Cotton Production Course at University of New England and sees cotton as an alternative crop to rice.

WEEDpak synthesizes the results of extensive research on IWM in Australian cotton farming systems from research . The WEEDpak manual includes extensive reference material to help identify weeds, an important first step in IWM. WEEDpak then discusses a number of other issues involved with IWM including herbicide resistance, herbicides and their application, farm hygiene, the control of volunteer cotton, and weed control in rotation crops. Since the main thrust of IWM is management, WEEDpak , the management of specific problem weeds

CD comprises a series of papers written for the Land & Water Australia Integration Symposium held May 2004. The symposium brought together critical thinkers from academic, policy and natural resource management sectors across Australia.

The project focussed on phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) status of northern cropping soils.

Stores of P and K have been depleted by crop removal and limited fertiliser application, with depletion most significant in the subsoil. Soil testing strategies are confounded by slowly available mineral reserves with uncertain availability. We have assessed the utility of new soil tests to measure these reserves, quantified their availability to plants and undertaken a regional sampling strategy to identify areas of greatest P and K deficit. Fertiliser application strategies for P and K have been tested and the interactions between these and other nutrients determined in a large field program.

Site-specific irrigation enables the delivery of irrigation water where and when it is required

in the field. Commercially available hardware is available that can adjust the application

from centre pivots and lateral moves; however, wide adoption of these systems is limited

because of a lack of decision-support to determine irrigation application.

The irrigation control framework VARIwise was created to developed, simulate and compare

site-specific irrigation control strategies (McCarthy et al. 2010). This involves: (i) dividing

the field into smaller, controllable sub-areas named ‘cells’; (ii) assigning soil and plant

parameters to each cell; (iii) calibrating the corresponding crop model for each cell; and (iv)

executing a crop production model within in each cell. VARIwise has been used to

determine the optimal data input types and resolution for each control strategy in simulation

(McCarthy et al. 2011; McCarthy et al. 2012).

Two general types of adaptive control strategies have been implemented in VARIwise that

can be applied to irrigation: sensor- and model-based. Sensor-based control strategies use the

difference between a measured and target variable to update the irrigation application, whilst

model-based control strategies determine irrigation application that best achieves the desired

future crop performance as predicted by a calibrated crop production model. Two

implemented sensor-based strategies are Iterative Learning Control (ILC) and Iterative Hill Climbing Control (IHCC).

This project has demonstrated the implementation of adaptive control systems at commercial

cotton cropping sites. The control simulation framework VARIwise has been used for the

simulation and development of irrigation control strategies. The framework potentially

provides site-specific irrigation volumes and timing to be determined in autonomous

irrigation, either for uniform or variable-rate irrigation application.

Field evaluations of the control strategies were conducted on siphon and centre pivot

irrigation systems in Jondaryan, QLD utilising a weather, soil and plant sensors, control

strategies and irrigation control hardware. The siphon and centre pivot irrigation trials

produced yield improvements of 11% and 7% respectively, and water use reductions of 12%

and 4% respectively. Higher water reductions were achieved in surface irrigation systems

than overhead irrigation systems because of the larger volumes of irrigation water applied.

Adoption of these irrigation control systems would provide improved and automated

irrigation management and labour savings to the industry.

An on-the-go plant sensing system was developed to estimate plant density, plant height (for

leaf area index calculation), flower count (for square count calculation) and boll count, as

required to calibrate the industry crop production model OZCOT for the control strategy

operation. This sensing system was stand alone and platforms were developed that enabled

mounting to on-farm vehicles (e.g. moped) and irrigation machines. The centre pivot

irrigation trial indicated that plant data input was preferable to soil data input for model-based

irrigation control strategies.

There is limited control hardware currently commercially available for surface irrigation, and

commercial variable-rate solenoid-based irrigation adjustment hardware is available for

centre pivots and lateral moves. For the purposes of the field evaluations in this project, an

irrigation control hardware system was developed that was independent of the irrigation

system. This was based on adjusting the flow rate using a remotely controllable ball valve

and servomechanism and could be installed in-line with siphons and droppers on irrigation

machines.

Over 90% of the Australian irrigated cotton industry uses surface irrigation. Further

enhancements to the system would entail investigating the spatial resolution of irrigation

application adjustment for both surface and overhead irrigation systems. This would

potentially determine the data requirements of surface irrigation control systems, reduce the

sensors requirement (leading to reduced cost of the system) and increase the practicality and

uptake of the final system. In addition, the control strategies could be extended to consider

fertiliser application in surface irrigation systems, as the efficiency of the fertiliser application

is expected to be related to the efficiency of the irrigation application.

In June 2014, irrigation researchers met in Narrabri for IrriCOMM. This workshop arose from discussion

between CSIRO, CRDC and NSW DPI about irrigation research. The tools that irrigators are using to

manage their irrigations have not changed dramatically over the last 20 years – despite investment in, and

resulting advances to, R&D. The dominant tools being used by irrigators are capacitance based soil

moisture measurement devices, and, more often than not, growers are making irrigation decisions based

on their experience: years of irrigating and knowledge of their irrigation system, field, and soils, and most

appropriate time to irrigate that crop under those specific circumstances.

Researchers have been developing weather and plant based scheduling methods, however, uptake of these

technologies by growers has been limited due to a lack of local readily available evapotranspiration data,

suitable crop coefficients, and the complexity of plant based methods when applying this to large scale

broad-acre cropping systems in a highly variable climate.

The IrriCOM workshop enabled researchers to interact and discuss these issues, gaining a better

understanding of current and future technologies and tools for irrigation management in cotton. It was

found that significant progress has been made with a variety of irrigation technologies and that much of

the research was at a point where it was needing to be extended to the wider cotton community – hence

the 2015 Cotton Irrigation Technology Tour evolved.

The purpose of the 2015 Cotton Irrigation Technology Tour was to showcase the latest irrigation

scheduling and automation field scale irrigation research. New irrigation research is offering

opportunities for growers to improve water use efficiency and yield through more precise

scheduling and application technology.

The tour was comprised of three field days: one at Emerald in Central Queensland; one at Moree in

the Gwydir Valley; and one at Nevertire in the Macquarie Valley.

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