The issues of succession planning does riot only relate to cotton families, or farming families for that matter, but is a worldwide issues for many small, medium and even large business where ever more than one family member is involved in the ownership of that business

Growing concern in recent years about the effects of pesticides and fungicides on the environment has led to an increased interest in alternative plant protection methods worldwide. Enhancing plants' own natural defence systems in order to provide broad spectrum resistance against a range of fungal, viral and bacterial pathogens is an attractive and viable alternative. The process, known as Systemic Induced Resistance (SIR), requires prior exposure of the plant to a locally infecting pathogen, an avirulent form of a pathogen or special chemicals. This exposure results in a 'sensitisation' of the plant leading to a rapid resistance response on subsequent pathogen attack. The protection thus provided in both treated and distal tissues is usually in the form of decreased lesion numbers or disease severity.

Among the oilseeds, cottonseed is considered to be an important commodity because of its use in food and animal feed throughout the world. Cottonseed contains approximately 23-26% oil and 26-28% protein on a moisture, lint-free seed basis (Cherry, 1984). The current annual world production of cottonseed oil is approximately 4 million metric tons, ranking sixth behind soybean, oil palm, rapeseed, sunflower and groundnut (Oil World Annual, 1998). Global cottonseed production should expand in the future as a result of increased cotton acreage and higher seed yields.

Glycinebetaine is a compound that some plants accumulate as a defence against stress conditions. In this paper we demonstrate that the application of glycinebetaine to cotton seed increased plant yield. Seed germination and seedling vigour in a saline soil were increased by 64 and 68%, respectively by seed treatment with glycinebetaine at 5% (w/w). Cotton yield was increased by 18 to 22% by the seed treatment at 5 and 7.5 % , respectively. Additional foliar application of glycine betaine was beneficial only at low levels of seed treatment.

This report is a summary of a partnership project, involving Australian as well as overseas co-operators, which was conducted to evaluate four Australian cotton varieties in terms of their utility value to the textile mill and their agronomic and thus economic viability on the cotton production side. The four varieties, Sicala 40, Siokra V16, Sicala V2i, and Sicot 189, were grown and ginned by Auscott Ltd. , Narrabri, within the frame work of a Cotton Seed Distributors Ltd (CSD) variety trial. These varieties are representative of the bulk of Australian raw cotton production. As a result of a cooperative approach pursued by Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC), two renowned German manufacturers of mill preparatory equipment and open-end spinning frames, ie Trutzschler GinbH and Schlafhorst Autocoro GinbH, respectively, joined the consortium and conducted processing studies on a laboratory scale with sample bales that were shipped to Europe.

In 2000/01, the Australian cotton industry produced approximately 3.4 million bales with a gross estimated value of 1.7 billion dollars. Although cotton production in Australia is efficient, diseases, such as Fusarium wilt, are causing severe production losses. Unfortunately, the incidence of fusarium wilt in Australia has been increasing since it was identified in NSW daring the 93/94 season (Kochman, 1995). The disease is now present in many commercial cotton fields in NSW and Queensland. Although the resistance of elite Australian cotton cultivars is improving steadily, increasing the Fusarium wilt resistance of cotton cultivars remains a priority. While Australian cotton breeders are actively trying to enhance resistance to Fusarium wilt in their current breeding materials, they are also searching for novel sources of resistance genes. One possible source of new gales may be the native Australian Gossypium species, that are distant relatives of the cultivated cottons.

Australian cotton production areas are prone to significant damage by hail storms. Following a hail strike, a grower is left with trying to make the most out of what remains of his crop. There are few guidelines or criteria available to assist growers in making management decisions in regard to their hail damaged crop. A three year project looking at the management of hail damaged cotton crops, instigated and funded by the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, was begun in the 1993/94 season with the aim of developing some guidelines for managing hail damaged cotton crops

Black rootrot of cotton has been observed in 98 per cent of the farms regularly surveyed by NSW Agriculture in the Macquarie, Namoi, Gwydir and Macintyre valleys. The disease has potential to cause up to 40 per cent yield loss. The disease develops over time when the fungus T. basicola is present in adequate numbers within the vicinity of cotton roots when the environment is favourable for infection. The management strategy for this disease, therefore, could be based on four important components of the disease pyramid host, pathogen, environment and their interaction over the time.

A project examining ways of improving the water use efficiency of cotton through breeding has now been completed. This paper summarises the results of four years research. There was an interaction between cultivar and water environment, created by two okra leaf cultivars, Siokra L23 and Siokra 1-4 yielding relatively better under raingrown compared to irrigated. Cultivar maturity was highly correlated with raingrown yield and for each day increase in maturity yield increased by 34.4 kg/ha. Longer season cultivars had greater agronomic and leaf WUE than shorter season cultivars. This maturity, together with okra leaf produced the greatest WUE. Heritability of WUE traits in breeding populations was moderate to low and may still have some utility as selection criteria. A breeding strategy is presented which incorporates new techniques into the current breeding programme

Spray application technology