Allan and John Williams represented the Australian

cotton industry at a workshop on environmental management

systems in agriculture, in Denver, Colorado, from 8-10th January, 2003.

The workshop was organised as part of a project titled

Partnerships for Livestock Environmental Management Systems

(PLEMS). The PLEMS project is piloting the use of

environmental management systems (EMS) in Livestock

operations in nine states.

Thye Plems project is funded by the US Department of Agriculture and the US Environment Protection Agency. Implementation of the project is being co-ordinated by the University fo Wisconsin. It is a four year project to explore the potential of agricultural environmental management systems to resolve community and regulatory concerns by supporting the development of strategies to reduce impacts of livestock manure on the environment and public health.

soil survey project was carried out in the lower Lachlan Valley around the township ofHillston with the aim of identifying current and potential soil limitations to cotton production inthis region. Within the lower Lachlan cotton-growing area, three main soil classes were identified,each with distinct features which influence cotton production

Community Conversations - Aboriginal employment strategy school based traineeships

a mild, wet winter followed by a mild wet spring as has been experienced in 2010, provides theideal situation for pest survival and early season build up of populations, especially sucking pests. Sucking pest management stategies in this type of season are outlines

CSIRO has had a successful cotton breeding program for over 20 years. In 1996, more than 90% of Australia's cotton was sown to varieties derived from the CSRO breeding program. In the Cotton CRC, the aim is to complement and enhance the previous work in all areas of traditional breeding, genetic engineering and fibre quality.

The Australian cotton industry has, until recently, relied largely upon residual pre-plant and pre-emergent herbicides for weed control in irrigated production systems. These herbicides provide good protection against a broad spectrum of weeds. In some circumstances, however, residual herbicides adversely impact the growth and development of young cotton seedlings. This is particularly the case when cool wet conditions occur early in the cotton season. As well, the majority of these herbicides have a half-life of three to four months and may persist for long periods when bound to clay particles within the soil profile. Movement of these molecules bound to clay particles is common in irrigated systems. While procedures to minimise riverine contamination are in place on irrigated farming systems, herbicides are routinely detected in the river systems of the central and north-west regions (Table I). It should be noted that of these detections atrazine and metolachlor are the only herbicides detected in significant amounts and these are used extensively in dryland sorghum.

The CSIRO Cotton Cultivar Trial(CCT) has been run cooperatively by CSIRO and DPIQ for 24 years and is used as the last stage in our breeding line evaluation. Early generation testing following single plant selection involves unreplicated progeny rows at the Australian Cotton Research Institute, further progeny row tests and multiple row replicated trials at a limited number of farm sites. At each stage, lines with poor seedling vigour, disease susceptibility poor fibre quality or low yield are removed from further testing. The CCT involves 13 irrigated sites and three dryland sites in all major cotton growing regions in Australia. Management is normal commercial practice including full insect control. Entries in the CCT include promising breeding lines and commercial standards. Plots consist of three or four rows from 10 to 14 metres long. There were five replications in the 1996/97 trials and four in 1997/98. The centre rows of all plots are harvested with a modified picker, the seed cotton weighed and a subsample is taken for ginning at Biloela or Narrabri and fibre quality analysis at Narrabri. The most promising lines are retained in the scheme and also seed increased. In this way, by the time good performance is confined, sufficient seed is available for large scale testing and final seed increase for commercial use.

WEEDpak is a compilation of information on the management of weeds in the Australian cotton industry. The major theme throughout WEEDpak is the management of weeds through integrated weed management (IWM) principles. It is a synthesis of extensive research on IWM conducted over the last 13 years, now released in one volume at the 11 Australian Cotton Conference. The entire document can be found at www.cottoninfo.com.au/publications/weedpak.

The CSIRO breeding program at the Australian Cotton Research Institute at Narrabri aims to develop locally adapted varieties for use by Australian farmers, The program has been very successful in developing varieties for all cotton growing areas with eleven conventional and five Ingard varieties available through Cotton Seed Distributors (CSD) for 1998 planting. Key advances from the CSIRO breeding program include the development of varieties with okra leaf (for insect and mite tolerance), better disease resistance (particularly bacterial blight and Verticillium wilt), improved fibre quality and good adaptation to cool growing areas. The varieties produced by CSIRO have brought many millions of extra dollars to farmers and have been a key factor in the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in recent years. As a continuation of this program of regular release of new high performing varieties we are pleased to announce the introduction of three new varieties: Sicala 40, Siokra V-16 and Sicot 189i

Oils having very high levels of oleic acid have superior stability and are valuable for frying and other high temperature applications. Oils with equal proportion of palmitic acid, oleic acid, stearic acid, namely, the POS type oil may be suitable starting material for the development of cocoa butter substitute. Our project aims to produce cottonseed oil with elevated levels of stearic and/or oleic acid by means of antisense inhibition of both the 11.9 stearoyl-ACP and microsomal ro-6 desaturase genes.