The CRDC Strategic Plan 2003-2008 outlines CRDC's investment priorities and strategy for this five year period.

The 2013–14 year also marked the first year of investment under the CRDC’s new Strategic R&D Plan 2013–18, which has a strong focus on improving the industry’s profitability, sustainability and competitiveness. During the 2013–14 year, CRDC invested a total of $21.9 million on behalf of cotton growers and the Australian Government in RD&E with more than 200 projects across five key program areas: farmers, industry, customers, people and performance.

CRDC's Annual Operating Plan for 2012-13 (AOP): the fifth (and final) annual operating plan under the CRDC's Strategic R&D Plan 2008-2013.

The Peter Cullen Trust Science to Policy Leadership Program is an annual

program which is designed to specifically equip participants with the skills to bring

about positive change in urban or rural water management in Australia. It aims to provide

graduates with enhanced capacity to lead informed debate and influence policy related water, land

and environmental management.

The Impact Assessment of CRDC Water Use Efficiency Investments 2011-15 is one of a series of qualitative and quantitative impact assessments of CRDC investments, conduced by Agtrans Research.

CRDC has commissioned the series of impact assessments in important areas of investment, including nutrition, water-use efficiency , Bt technologies and sustainability projects. The purpose of the evaluations is to determine the success of CRDC’s investments against the stated Strategic Plan goals, and to inform future investments.

The Impact Assessment of CRDC Water Use Efficiency Investments 2011-15 found that CRDC’s investment of $4.90 million on behalf of cotton growers and the Australian Government into six water-use efficiency projects during 2010-15 delivered major economic benefits to cotton growers. This investment provided a return benefit of $40.62 million to growers, a benefit-cost ratio of 8.29 to 1.

Presentations CD from Climate connect conference 2006

myBMP Overview: website operational 2010. A power point presentation on myBMP tools, website and resources with technical assistance contacts.

The CRDC Strategic Plan 1998-2003 outlines CRDC's investment priorities and strategy for this five year period.

The project successfully captured interactions between cultivar (genetic) x season (environment) x field management x post processing (ginning) variables. It demonstrated that targeted irrigation at flowering in combination with growth regulator applications, affected fibre length and the amount of entanglements (neps) in cotton lint. It also showed that the level of trash (leaf matter) in ginned cotton had a strong influence on colour grades and premium and discount levels, compared to other fibre quality parameters which played a more important role in determining yarn performance. While ‘premium’ cultivars have relative merits for some markets, the typical negative association between higher quality and lower fibre yield, was supported, with yield ultimately having the largest influence on production gross margins. Further, a fully integrated operation (e.g. controlling farm, gin, mill) would potentially benefit by producing more premium fibre with less intensive ginning.

Micronaire is a combined measure of fibre fineness and maturity and significantly influences the valuation and performance of cotton. New research was able to better define the environmental and genetic influences that effect fibre perimeter (inherent fineness), and better models for micronaire were developed, which in-turn allowed better predictions for neps. In addition, the boll cutting technique was validated, which assisted in understanding the influence that defoliation has on fibre quality. In light of this, the ‘CottASSIST’ on-line management tool was updated to: 1. Improve the predictability of micronaire from average temperature during the boll filling period. 2. Estimate the neps risk linked to the predicted final micronaire generated by the micronaire predictor. 3. Situations where total neps are greater than 250 neps/g are flagged. 4. Highlighted the impact of changes in defoliation timing on final micronaire and neps, and 5. Predict the impact of lint cleaning passages on nep level.

Some new sensor technology and portable instruments were listed and reviewed that had potential to assist in measuring crop status components to be subsequently used in modelling fibre quality. This was undertaken to assist in the development of future project ideas. Linked to this outcome we were able to properly validate techniques that estimated fibre quality at maturity as well as identifying the risk of neps at defoliation.

Research assessing some modifications to gin saws and the removable rib inserts, showed that a standard saw surface finish in combination with a Teflon coated CSIRO v-shaped modified insert, improved gin out-turn.

Using cotton fibre width (‘ribbon width’) data collected by the Cottonscope instrument enabled the modelling of the change in fibre ellipticity for developing Upland and Pima cottons. This gives new insight into how cotton fibre pack together in a yarn structure, and how these new objective data form Cottonscope can contribute to predicting the processing performance of cotton.

The natural wax layer on the surface of cotton is an impermeable barrier that needs to be caustically scoured to allow effective dyeing. Significant work was undertaken characterising this wax.

For more information about this research please contact: Dr Mike Bange (Michael.bange@csiro.au) or Dr Robert Long (Robert.long@csiro.au).

The EMS Pathways Project “Enhancing the cotton industry’s BMP program (ems pathway) to improve adoption” (the Project) has allowed the cotton industry to investigate whether and how the combination of the industry’s already established environmental management programme (‘BMP’) and the increasing attention being paid to the environmental characteristics and performance of agricultural production systems could be utilised to provide advantages to the Australian cotton industry — such as increased adoption of sustainable and profitable farming practices, increased awareness of the environmental credentials of Australian cotton and increased market value.

The Project sought to extend the BMP concept both in scope — to fibre quality as well as

environment — and in extent, from the cotton grower to all sectors of the domestic cotton supply chain. The reasoning behind this extension was that it would allow the industry to better support a branded product that could be used to differentiate Australian cotton.

The activities undertaken by the Project fell into 4 distinct categories:

1. Investigating the market’s requirements — especially retailers’, vis-à-vis desired

and required ‘sustainability’ attributes to determine whether the existing BMP Program could meet those requirements (or needed adjusting) and then endeavouring to have Australian BMP cotton made into garments and thereby trial ‘whole of chain’ BMP so as to understand both the limitations to and potential of such an approach to add value to the adoption of good natural resource management practices

2. Developing fibre quality best management practices for each of the major sectors of the domestic cotton supply chain, in collaboration with the industry association and commercial interests participating in each of those sectors

3. Investigating the requirements and options for demonstrating stewardship, domestically and especially internationally, through developing the framework for a branded product1, and through collaborating with relevant international organisations and initiatives focussed on or addressing sustainability issues in cotton production

4. Maintaining an on-going involvement in core industry BMP activities, and in particular reviewing the domestic approach to better natural resource management as implemented by the catchment planning process and relevant legislation, both state and federal.

These 4 main areas of activity fall into 2 quite distinct and different points of focus for the Project and this report: the first 3 areas were generally directed to investigating and testing the potential for market pull-through to provide an incentive for the on-farm adoption of better natural resource management practices, while the second focal point was the existing milieu of natural resource management in Australia: the institutions, legislation, policies and current thinking regarding how best to build a pathway to sustainable farming systems.