CSIRO Wool Technology in Geelong has traditionally focussed on 'post-farm' wool research but is now expanding its activities to include textile related research and development for the wider Australian industry, including cotton. With approximately 200 staff at its laboratories and full mill processing facility in Geelong, CSIRO Wool Technology has extensive expertise in raw wool measurement and characterisation, wool textile processing, characterisation and optimisation of wool fabric properties and the development of new wool products. Much of this expertise can be applied to other fibres as illustrated in the current paper. In a preliminary study the Sirolan- Laserscan, developed at Wool Technology for measuring the fibre diameter characteristics of wool, has been successfully applied in a novel mode of operation to accurately assess cotton fibre fineness.

The Project - A Review of Australian Cotton Classing Standards and perhaps for some, may be even many, of the Australian cotton growers prompting the question - Why? The comment &quote;If it isn't broken why fix it&quote; was heard on a number of occasions during meetings both formal and informal during August and September last year.

Even though the Australian cotton industry is based on a high input irrigated system, there is an increasingly significant area of dryland cotton. Over the last few years there has been increased interest, by researchers and growers alike, in trying to gain the maximum amount of yield from the limited water that is available to them. This limited water occurs both in dryland systems, and in irrigated systems where water allocation from storages is reduced due to low dam levels.

It is very important to understand the nature of the phenomena which have been collectively characterised as the 'Asian financial crisis' or the 'Asian meltdown'. I would like to take you through an analysis of what really happened to provide a context for the outlook for cotton in particular and Australian trade in general. A good understanding of the events is also necessary before we can attempt to draw out any lessons from the experience.

Control of Helicoverpa armigera is being forced towards minimising reliance on broad spectrum insecticides. Serious environmental concerns have emerged over the extensive use of highly toxic, non-specific compounds to control this species. Pest resurgence associated with the destruction of natural enemies and the development of high levels of insecticide resistance have lead to the steady increase in the use of biopesticides and transgenic plants containing insecticidal proteiris from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).

The 2017 Australian Cotton Production Manual is a critical reference tool for cotton growers: a one-stop-shop of on-farm cotton production information.

In the race for market share, the cotton industry faces strong competition from chemical fibres. Today, chemical fibres account for more than half the world's consumption of textile fibres, an increase of over 20 per cent since 1966 - most of it at cotton's expense. Furthermore, synthetic production is expanding at an increasing rate and synthetics are expected to capture a greater share of the growing world fibre market. Cottons traditional advantages - price and performance - no longer hold true. Cotton is no longer king.

Neps cause significant financial losses to the textile industry. This paper defines different types of cotton neps, their sources and measurements, and the current state of knowledge about research on neps. Generally, a nep is defined as an entanglement of fibres, that can be caused by environmental factors during growth, processing or are inherent to particular varieties. Biological neps are caused by trash particles entangled in the cotton and result in small dark specks in the greige fabric, but are generally removed by wet processing. Mechanical neps can be found in ginned lint, card web, yams and cloth and are strongly influenced by mechanical processing. Classicality, neps are measured by counting them in a card web, but now AFISTM can be used for high-speed measurement of neps in fibre samples. The Uster Evenness Tester measures neps in yarns as short thick spots. linage analysis is being used to quantify white speck neps on dyed fabric. White speck neps contain miniature clusters of fibres and are often not visible as defects until dyeing, rendering the fabric unsuitable for commercial use, resulting in large financial losses. It has been estimated that the U. S. textile industry has had financial losses as high as $200 million per year due to white specks. Initial research has shown strong correlation between AFISTM card sliver data and white speck content of fabric. More research is necessary to establish relationships between bale data and the quality of the finished product. Technology to measure more attributes of cotton on a larger scale is becoming available and research is needed to determine the accuracy of this data. The U. S. & Australia will be collaborating in research to: I) gain fundamental knowledge of the nature and behaviour of cotton and neps; 2) gather baseline data on the level and characteristics of neps in Australian cotton; and 3) predict white specks on fabric using high speed fibre data.

Deep drainage(DD) - water that passes beyond the - is an important process in irrigated cropping soils to ensure leaching of salts through the soil profile to deeper soil layers, the vadose zone ( the zone between the rootzone and the watertable) or to groundwater. Salt can either be naturally present within some soils or be added through low quality irrigation water. Furthermore, excessive DD may cause water table rise to the rootzone with associated salts, so precludig the growth of salt sensitive species.

DD is also an economic negative, as costs of pumping and storage are nto realised in increased yields or possible increased reas under production. The loss of irrigation waters to DD is particularily important in drought years where the rare water resource must be carefully utilised to ensure crops attain maximum yield per unit volume of applied water.

The study reported here, focused on DD water losses and the quality of those lost waters (in terms of salinity) on 7 irrigated cotton farms (all but one under traditional furrow irrigation management) in the Upper Murray Darling Basin (UMDB) near the towns of Boggabilla (2 sites) , Dalby, Goondiwindi, Macalister, Pampas and St George.

many regarded the advent of low volume irrigation devices (eg. lateral moves) with their known capacity to increase water use efficiency (WUE), (bales of cotton/unit water applied) as a 'win-win' situation, making minimum water go further, particularily as DD is almost zero. However, minimal or no DD equates to a reduced leaching fraction. This in turn can lead to a potential for increased rootzone salinity.

Several hydrological models were tested, to investigate their capacity to predict DD.

Cotton's share of world textile fibre consumption is falling and now equals less than 45%, down about five percentage points since 1986 when cotton's share was 50%. While cotton remains the single most important textile fibre in the world, the consumption of chemical fibre is rising faster than cotton, especially in developing countries and the former USSR. Total textile fibre consumption rose from 15 million tons in 1960 to 38 million in 1989, for an average rate of growth of 3.19% per year. The fastest growth in total fibre consumption occurred in industrial countries, with growth of 6.4% per year, and the slowest increase occurred in Eastern Europe and the USSR, 2.5% per year. Over the same thirty-year period, cotton consumption alone rose from 10 million tons to 19 million, for an average annual rate of growth of 2%, and cotton's share of world fibre consumption dropped from 68% to 49%.