Attendance at the International Committee for Cotton Test Methods (ICCTM) Meeting, the 31st International Cotton Conference Bremen and visit to the USDA cotton testing laboratory in New Orleans, USA. Chair of the ITMF Testing Committee Fibre Fineness and Maturity Working Group. This meeting discussed and planned the running of the technical sessions the following day including a detailed review of two proposals to recognise new instrumentation. The meeting also discussed and developed a recommendation for a new structure to facilitate both better utilisation of the technical expertise of the available chairpersons and also to provide the flexibility to for the Committee to adapt and incorporate new issues as required.

During this pilot study 20 water quality test kits were distributed across the industry, including properties growing crops other than cotton. Key water quality parameters including turbidity, temperature, EC, pH, carbonate hardness, total hardness and nitrite, nitrate, ammonium, phosphate and chloride ion concentrations were recorded during irrigations.

Although the feedback from participants was positive, the amount of data returned was insufficient to enable the comprehensive analysis of on‐farm water quality anticipated. We conclude that reduced staffing levels, as a consequence of very limited water availability, were too restrictive to allow sufficient resources to be made available for the trial.

However, analysis of the results available indicated that at least 15 to 30 % of nitrogen was lost to the tailwater systems as nitrate. This indicates that significant economic gain can be made through improving the efficiency of nutrient use by crops. The main benefit of the water quality kits was that they provided a quantitative basis for environmental management. Site‐specific water quality measurements could be collected that were directly related to local practice. Any change in practice that affects nutrient use efficiency could be assessed, thereby informing and quantifying environmental management systems such as BMP. The economic value of any improvement in practice can be readily determined from the water quality data thereby providing further impetus for improvements.

The water quality tests, which would cost approximately $120 per year per kit, provide the cotton and irrigation industry with a simple tool to seek, measure and record economic and environmental improvement.

In Bollgard® II cotton 2-5 sprays are required to manage mirid and stinkbugs every season. An industry survey revealed that growers are 'insurance' spraying when mirid numbers are below suggested thresholds. One main reason for insurance sprays is possibly a lack of confidence in the relationship between mirid numbers and fruit loss. The development of a plant based management strategy (through detailed studies on mirid numbers, fruit loss and yield) could increase growers and consultant’s confidence in making decisions on mirid management, therefore reducing insurance sprays. The main objectives of this project was to develop a plant based management strategy for mirids and to develop selective management options for mirids and stinkbugs to fit with the existing IPM systems.

Through this project, a plant based management strategy for mirids has been developed. This strategy will consider two major factors; mirid damage rates (per cent fruit loss per mirid per week) and retention levels. The action threshold for a plant based management strategy is determined as ≥ 80% retention at up to the 14/15 node stage. Thereafter, the threshold is 60 – 70% retention. Retention levels should be determined by assessing the 1st and 2nd position bolls of all nodes up to the 14/15 node stage. Thereafter, retention levels can be assessed for the top 5 nodes. A plant based threshold should be considered in association with per cent fruit loss for each mirid. It should be considered that two per cent fruit loss per week will occur for every mirid above the base population.

When pale cotton stainer feed on young bolls (up to 15 days old), they can cause up to 40% yield loss. The germination rate of seed from damaged bolls is significantly reduced, by up to 30% compared to the control. This finding from the glasshouse trials needs further research in field conditions to confirm the result.

When salt is mixed with low rates (100 mL/ha) of Shield® (clothianidin), mortality is increased by 25% compared to the low rates of Shield® alone, which is similar to the full rates (250 mL/ha). Shield® and salt mixtures also reduced the impact on benficials significantly. However, caution needs to be exercised when using Shield® against mirids if aphids are present in the field, as aphids are capable of developing resistance against Shield®.

Cotton production is an important rural industry in Australia. Disease pressure from emerging pathogens such as Thielaviopsis basicola threatens to reduce production. Wide-spread application of Best Management Practices, a desire to have a reduced environmental impact and community demand for more sustainable produce means alternatives methods to treat disease are becoming more important. This study has investigated the use of three disease reduction strategies; soil bacteria, organic soil amendments and plant derived proteins to treat black root rot in Australian cotton.

Strategy 1: Pantoea agglommerans, Exiguobacterium acetylicum and Microbacterium sp. (PEM) have previously been shown to inhibit infection of wheat by Rhizoctonia solani AG8 in soil tests. Azospirillum brasilense has been shown to promote growth and suppress disease in a range of crops. In invitro directional growth tests, the PEM species suppress growth of T. basicola in the presence of cotton plants. Although the plant was shown to be a factor in the suppression, the effect was not due to an active host plant response and was still present when a cotton root extract was used as a fungal attractant instead of intact plants. PEM and A. brasilense were also found to reduce disease symptoms in pot trials but not in the field. Further study to determine any effect on yield is recommended.

Strategy 2: Various soil amendments have been used to suppress fungal pathogens. Three readily available soil amendments, yeast extract, zein and soy protein were tested in a pot trial to determine their ability to reduce survival of Thielaviopsis basicola spores. Disease symptoms in cotton seedlings planted in soil infested with T. basicola spores and amended with zein or soy protein three weeks prior to planting were not significantly reduced. Yeast extract reduced disease symptoms to zero when soil was sterilised prior to addition of T. basicola endoconidia and amendment, but not when live soil was used. None of these amendments are recommended for application in field trials.

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Strategy 3: Rs-AFP2 is a 5kDa defensin protein naturally found in radish seeds and shown to suppress a range of plant pathogenic fungi. Invitro testing in this study implicated that the heat stable Rs-AFP2 protein has a role in suppressing T. basicola. To confirm the role of Rs-AFP2, the gene encoding Rs-AFP2 was cloned into a commercial strain of the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis. Growth inhibitions assays confirmed that Rs-AFP2 inhibits T. basicola in-vitro, however K. lactis was determined to be an unsuitable host strain for production of this protein. Further work on this protein is recommended using either Saccharomyces cerevisae or a glucosylceramide-negative K. lactis mutant.

Keytah is an irrigated cotton and grains farming operation west of Moree in Northern NSW. The

total area of the property is 24 000 hectares of which 10 400 hectares is irrigated cotton, grown in

rotation with wheat. During a normal season only half of the irrigated area is cropped at any one

time with the other half maintained as a bare fallow. The farming system includes a summer cotton

crop, planted in October and followed by a winter wheat crop planted in May and harvested in

November. After the winter wheat crop a fallow of approximately 12 months takes place before

cotton is replanted back in October. The farming system incorporates 60” beds where cotton is

usually grown in two rows 30” apart or more recently in a single row where water supplies are

limiting. In comparison the wheat is grown in 4 rows on the same 60” beds at a spacing of 15”.

Regardless of the planting system adopted different plant lines are maintained between the summer

and winter crop options. All tractors have been extended to operate on 120” (i.e. 3 m) centres.

In a normal irrigation season Keytah relies on 7 to 7.5 ML/Ha of water for irrigation which is applied

by surface (furrow) irrigation and two lateral move irrigators. Water is sourced from the Gwydir and

Mehi Rivers and is pumped into on farm storages before being distributed to the field for irrigation.

In response to limited irrigation supplies (1 ML/Ha) in 2007 / 2008, a radical change in farming

practices is currently being pursued to establish and produce a cotton crop. Previously the variation

in soil properties across the farm has been identified via an EM survey. This survey was conducted

when the soil was relatively close to field capacity. In an attempt to identify fields which had

adequate soil moisture for planting cotton, an EM survey of the farm was again conducted to

identify areas of high soil moisture content. The EM survey identified 2 fields side by side where one

field had an estimated increase in soil moisture of 40% soil moisture. This increase in soil moisture

was attributed to no tillage over the fallow period.To assess the benefits of farming system changes in terms of energy and GHG emissions, 3 scenarios

were developed from actual crop history data and evaluated using the energy assessment software,

EnergyCalc.developed by the National Centre for

Engineering in Agriculture to assess total on farm energy use and the associated GHG emissions. The

three scenarios that were developed to assess farming practices on Keytah included:

i) a benchmark of energy use from 2000,

ii) current practices or reduced tillage and

iii) progression towards zero till farming methods

Each scenario was developed from previous farm records of field K8 (in 2000) and current crop

records of K8 and C16 (reduced tillage) and K13 and C17 (towards zero till). Farm practices were also

confirmed via an initial site visit.

The cotton industry in Australia had an early interest in pursuing improved safety and has included

presentations on cotton production health and safety at most annual cotton conferences since 1990

(Clarke and Churches, 1992b). There has been significant investment in the development of practical

resources, incentives and programs to improve health and safety on cotton farms by the industry.These

have been facilitated through the Cotton Research and Development Corporation and by governments,

specifically the NSW and Queensland workplace health and safety authorities.

There has been recent interest in identifying drivers of change to improve safety in the Australian

agricultural industries by those wishing to ensure that safety promotion and extension programs have

greater impact on achieving adoption of recognised interventions (Fragar, 2008).

At the same time there has been a growing interest by sectors in the cotton industry in examining

safety changes and specifically, the impact that introduction of genetically modified cotton may have

had on occupational health and safety in cotton production. Studies in China and South Africa have

demonstrated a reduction in pesticide poisonings with the adoption of genetically modified (Bt cotton)

(Hossain 2004; Pray 2002). While studies have examined the economic and pest control impacts of

biotechnology on cotton production in Australia, no research has been reported into the impact that

biotechnology, or other changes have had on safety in the industry in this country (Pyke, In press).

The objectives for this study were:

I. To identify and describe potential factors that have influenced the health and safety of people

associated with cotton production in Australia

2. To establish the health impact that the introduction of new agricultural chemistry technology,

integrated pest management and genetically modified cotton has had on the health and safety of

people associated with cotton production

3. On the basis of findings, to recommend a more integrated approach to health and safety risk

assessment, management and reporting for the cotton industry.

The Cotton Field Awareness Map is an industry initiative which has been designed to highlight the location of cotton fields. The service is provided free of charge with the purpose of minimising off-target damage from downwind pesticide application, particularly during fallow spraying.

Farmers, farm managers, resellers, consultants, agronomists, applicators and contractors are encouraged to input their cotton fields into a location map. Users can also access the Cotton Map to check the location of the paddocks they may be planning to spray to assess the proximity of the nearest cotton crop. Since the introduction of Cotton Map, reported herbicide damage to cotton has typically remained below 3%, compared to 11% in 2009 (before introduction of Cotton Map)

Biodiversity, ecosystem service provision and human well-being are inextricably linked. The current rate of biodiversity loss worldwide is impacting on ecosystem service provision with negative implications for human well-being. Little quantitative information is available about the provision of most ecosystem services by most ecosystems, the effect of management on the ability of vegetation to provide services, or trade-offs in service provision with land use. This information is particularly important in agricultural landscapes where the extent of landscape change is affecting biodiversity and ecosystem service provision substantially and thus agricultural sustainability.

This study quantified the provision of carbon storage, erosion mitigation and biodiversity conservation services by five vegetation communities (river red gum Eucalyptus camaldulensis riparian forests, coolibah E. coolabah woodlands and open- woodlands, myall Acacia pendula tall shrublands and tall open-shrublands, black box E. largiflorens woodland and open-woodland, and mixed grassland – low open-chenopod shrubland) common on the lower Namoi floodplain in northern New South Wales, Australia. Sites represented the full range of structural and compositional variants encountered within each vegetation type over the 7100 km2 study region, from heavily grazed derived grasslands to old-growth woodland or forest evidently little affected by anthropogenic disturbance.

The environmental conditions dictating the location of each vegetation type in the landscape were investigated. The distribution of vegetation types depended predominantly on soil type, flood patterns and the interaction between the two. Woody and non-woody vegetation was mapped across the study region using unsupervised classification of ten single-date SPOT 5 scenes with 85% accuracy. Woody vegetation covered approximately 7% of the lower Namoi floodplain.

Carbon storage was measured or estimated for soils, woody vegetation, dead standing vegetation, coarse woody debris, herbaceous vegetation, litter and roots. River red gum sites were the most valuable vegetation type for carbon storage, having up to 4.5% carbon content in the surface 0–5 cm soil depth increment, with total site carbon storage averaging 216 t C ha–1. The most carbon-dense site was east of Narrabri and dominated by river red gum. Grasslands were the least carbon-dense with 40.0 t C ha–1. The greatest proportion of carbon in river red gum sites was in woody biomass, but in all other vegetation types and especially grasslands, the top 0–30 cm of the soil was the most C-rich component of the ecosystem. Woody biomass C was positively correlated with C derived from dead standing wood, coarse woody debris and litter, but not herbaceous biomass C, which was negatively correlated.

Herbaceous vegetation cover, litter cover and macroaggregate stability as determined by the topsoil C:N ratio was used to rank sites for erosion mitigation service provision. Erosion mitigation value was assessed in terms of aggregate stability, which was determined by a relationship between mean weight diameter of aggregates and soil C:N ratio, as well as dominant cations on the clays. Soils with higher C:N contained more stable macroaggregates, and tended to be dominated by river red gum. High aggregate stability in river red gum sites was attributed to large inputs of eucalypt litter and coarse

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woody debris. Highest microaggregate stability was also observed in river red gum sites and attributed to the dominance of Ca2+ rather than Na+ on clay exchange sites.

Vascular plant and bird conservation value of sites was determined by ranking sites according to the number of rare (i.e. infrequently observed) species present. For birds, species richness was also taken into account. River red gum sites were ranked highest for vascular plant and bird conservation value because they contained the highest abundance of rare species of both vascular plants and birds. However, river red gum sites also contained the greatest number of introduced plant species presumably as a result of flood mediated dispersal of propagules. All vegetation communities were included among the sites of highest conservation value for both vascular plants and birds. However, in the top 30% (16 of 54) of sites ranked according to conservation value, only five sites were valuable for both plant and bird conservation. River red gum sites had the most structurally complex vegetation, which coupled with their proximity to water, encouraged high bird species richness and abundance. Woody plants were the most influential vegetation component determining bird conservation value, but different vegetation types were preferentially used by different bird species, implying that the full spectrum of vegetation types is required to maximise bird and plant conservation at the regional scale.

Increasing grazing intensity severely diminished both plant and bird conservation value at river red gum and coolibah sites as a result of the loss of rare species. Grazing also detracted from carbon storage, both directly through biomass consumption and indirectly through associated management (such as ring-barking to increase herbaceous

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biomass production and clearing). The functional richness (i.e. the number of different life-forms of vegetation types) was more influential than species richness in terms of ecosystem service provision. Shannon–Wiener diversity of vegetation communities showed no relationship with ecosystem service provision. No trade-offs were evident between the three ecosystem services measured in this study, but conservation value and carbon services declined under increasingly intense grazing. Increasing woody vegetation biomass and cover resulted in decreased herbaceous biomass production, leading to the trade-off between nature conservation and carbon sequestration on the one hand, and livestock production on the other. There are few ungrazed sites in the study region, hence natural capital may be diminished still further with continued grazing of almost the entire landscape.

Middle East – Asia Minor 1 (MEAM1) or B-biotype, commonly referred to as silverleaf whitefly (SLW) is an introduced pest of Australian agriculture, particularly cotton and horticulture.

The ecosystem service of biological control is an important component of integrated pest management (IPM) in cotton. Fundamental to improving the use of biological control in IPM is knowledge of predator biology and evaluating their potential contribution in pest control. Over several projects, the contribution of several important natural enemies of cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover and SLW has been studied. This includes the ladybeetle, Hippodamia variegata Goeze, the big-eyed bug Geocoris lubra Kirkaldy, damsel bugs Nabis kinbergii Reuter and the wasp parasitoid Lysiphlebus testaceipes (Cresson).

This project studied development, prey consumption and prey choice in three common cotton predators: minute two-spotted ladybird Diomus notescens Blackburn, transverse ladybird Coccinella transversalis Fabricius and green lacewing Mallada signatus Schneider.

The John Deere (JD) 7760 harvester has been taken up very quickly by the Australian cotton industry as these machines can harvest cotton virtually non-stop, making them very productive, requiring little labour as it dispenses with the requirement of module building. There were over 200 of these harvesters operational during the 2011/12 cotton season harvesting around 75% of the crop, which is the largest percentage of any crop harvested by the JD 7760 harvester worldwide.

There have been some suggestions that the quality of the cotton lint harvested by the JD 7760 harvester during the 2011/12 season was more variable and trashier than fibre harvested by the traditional basket machines which produce the conventional modules. In order to compare the quality from these two harvesting systems it was necessary to harvest a single field utilising both harvesting methods.

To ensure that environmental variables are accounted for, trials were conducted in the Gwydir Valley (central) and the Lachlan Valley (south) growing areas. The test fields were harvested at the same time of day, with moisture continually recorded to ensure that it stays below 12%. The Conventional and Round modules produced were staged in the sequence that they were produced to allow for direct comparison and to highlight issues such as infield variation or leaf defoliation etc. Round and Conventional modules were ginned at the same gin within a similar timeframe to ensure that there is no weathering effect applied to part of the sample modules.

This trial which was conducted in Boomi and Hillston has shown that there were no significant differences in the quality of cotton harvested by the JD 7760 and basket system spindle harvesters. However, this can only be achieved if seed cotton is not harvested when moisture is above 12%, that the Round modules are staged and transported to the gin and processed in the sequence that they were produced, that the modules are placed on a smooth, even and firm compact surface leaving a gap between modules to allow for water runoff and ensure that the wrap is not damaged.