Cotton crops in Australia are visited by a wide range of beneficial insects. These include generalist predators and specialist parasitoids which attack key pests. The potential value of these beneficial insects has not been widely exploited in cotton pest management due to lack of understanding of their impact on pests, lack of techniques to maximise their abundance and effectiveness and indiscriminate use of broad-spectrum insecticides on cotton crops against major pests. The adoption of within field monocultures in the cotton production system in Australia also discriminate against and reduce the activity of beneficial insects because they lack ecological diversity (Hagen and Hale, 1974). In such agroecosystems, pest populations increase, minor pests become major pests and non-pests become pests. This is because the food, hosts, prey, and hibernating or over wintering sites of the natural enemies are reduced thus affecting biological control (DeLoach 1971; Mensah, 1997; 1999). Natural enemies of cotton pests usually have different food requirements in the larval and adult stages to develop and survive through the season. In contrast, adult pests particularly Helicoverpa spp. can nominally lay their eggs without any feeding, relying only on food reserves transferred from their larval stage (Beirne 1967). Helicoverpa spp. are highly migratory and can rapidly infest cotton crops and lay their eggs. Unless natural enemies are present and well established in high numbers before the pest arrive, they cannot respond rapidly enough to control these pests (Fitt, 1989; Mensah, 1997, 1999).

Water pumping is 46% to 75% of the total direct energy use as large quantities of water are pumped for irrigation. How efficiently this happens depends on the efficiency of the pump stations. Performing a pump test highlights opportunities for significant improvements in pump efficiency and therefore significant cost savings.

Put simply, Area Wide Integrated Pest Management is the combined effort of a number of farmers and their advisers to manage pests using all the tools available with minimum impact on beneficial insects, the environment or their neighbours.

Responsible cotton production - this is the future. Increasingly the growing of cotton will need to be conducted in a way that minimises its perceived impact on the environment and greater community. This will need to involve a greater understanding of the interactions that occur within our cotton production system such that we start to maximise the synergies that can be achieved by optimising the components that interact. A top down approach of looking at important driving influences such as economics and linking this to rotation and agronomy planning can provide some important clues as to the direction cotton growers can take their production systems in the future. The farming systems approach aims to link some or all of the various components (soil, insects, weeds, disease, water, economics) into a single framework. Many components of a sustainable system have been researched and are ready to be applied to a package.

The Improving Energy Efficiency on Irrigated Australian Cotton Farms project aims to deliver an industry-wide awareness campaign that provides tailored energy efficiency information and tools to irrigators and their advisors. This activity received funding from the Department of Industry as part of the Energy Efficiency Information Grants Program.

The increasing difficulty of controlling cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, in Australia due to its resistance to many chemical insecticides and the pressure to reduce the usage of chemicals led to the adoption of transgenic cotton as the key component of its pest control strategy by the Australian cotton industry. The commercial varieties available to date are based on the INGARD@ technology and contain an insecticidal protein (Cry1Ac) which was obtained from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). As INGARD@ varieties contain only one insecticidal protein, growers and researchers were concerned that cotton bollworm might become resistant to the transgenic cotton. At the inception of the project, resistance to the insecticidal proteins had not yet been demonstrated for any cotton pests. However, we were aware that the diamondback moth had become highly resistant to Bt sprays in many parts of the world. Subsequently, some 26 species of insect pests, including Heliothis virescens, have shown the ability to develop substantial resistance to Bt proteins. The naturally high tolerance of H. armigera for the Cry1Ac protein produced by INGARD and the decline in insecticidal activity through the latter part of the season (Fitt, 1998) suggest that inappropriate usage could well lead to INGARD@ losing its ability to prevent H. armigera damage. Consequently, the CRDC and CSIRO funded a project to investigate the potential for cotton bollworm to develop resistance to transgenic cotton and evaluation of the consequences of such resistance.

Pumps are simple machines that turn pump shaft rotational speed and torque into fluid energy in the form of elevation, velocity and pressure energies. The efficiency with which they complete this energy conversion gives rise to the important pump performance measure, pump efficiency. Pump efficiency is an inherent characteristic of any particular pump design, and is greatly influenced by the shapes of impellers and volutes (enclosure) and physical clearances between these two components.

Cotton production in Australia occurs mainly in cracking clay soils. In the past, it was widely assumed that deep drainage was negligible in these soils (Hearn, 2000). Recently, however, several researchers have contradicted this view. Deep drainage rates between 9 and 146mm/yr, nitrate and chloride fluxes of 227 and 3272 kg/ha/yr, respectively, have been reported from southern Queensland and my New South Wales(Moss et al 1999; Zischke and Gordon, 2000). Willis and Black (1996) reporting from central-western New South Wales observed that deep drainage was 17 mm/yr when a soil had 53% clay, whereas when it had 35% clay drainage increased to 202 mm/yr. These soils tended to have shallow water tables, and they suggested that drainage and Ieaching of salts from the profile could increase the salinity and decrease the depth to the watertable, with associated capillary rise resulting in salinization of productive soils

The cotton whitefly Bemisia tabaci is a serious pest of fibre, horticultural and ornamental crops world wide. When present in sufficient numbers, it can cause extensive damage through direct feeding, the production of large quantities of honeydew and as a vector of many viruses. Australia has a native strain of Bemisia tabaci. but in 1994, recently, a new biotype, known as the B-type or poinsettia strain was found in Australia. Overseas, B-type B. tabaci is a primary pest on cotton, vegetable crops (curcubits, tomatoes, rock melons) and ornamentals. This strain is extremely virulent, highly insecticide resistant, adapts to temperate climates and has a host range of over 500 plants. A nation-wide survey has now shown that this whitefly is widely distributed over eastern Queensland and NSW and the Darwin area of the NT .

Resistance is an ongoing concern with the management of Helicoverpa armigera in the Australian cotton industry. In response, resistance management strategies (RMS) are in place to either prevent, or retard further development of, resistance to either chemical insecticides or to the Cry1Ac protein in transgenic plants. While these strategies have been successful at slowing down the rate at which resistance has developed to insecticides, they have neither prevented the ultimate spread of resistance to most field populations nor the evolution of new mechanisms of resistance that make resistance increasingly difficult to manage. RMS are built on knowledge of the genetics of resistance and ecology of insects. Where knowledge is lacking we make assumptions about resistance based on general theories of how new genes evolve in populations. Our work with Bt resistance aims to test these assumptions so that we can refine or validate our knowledge and theories. In this way, we can devise strategies for the cotton industry that work, and do so at minimal cost to the grower.