The 2013 Cotton Growing Practices survey was conducted by Roth Rural on behalf of CRDC. It gathers valuable information about cotton farming practices to give a greater understanding of the industry’s current practices and performance in relation to a number of key areas (nutrition and soils, energy, harvesting and human resources) for the 2012-13 cotton crop, and so that trends over time can be monitored.

Annual Report 1998-1999

Annual Report 1997-1998

Annual Report 1996-1997

Annual Report 1995-1996

Annual Report 1994-1995

Annual Report 1993-1994

This fact sheet has been adapted for CottonInfo from a former Cotton Catchment Communities CRC publication. It was originally authored by CSIRO, NSW DPI, Incitec Pivot and CRDC.

The result of the trials clearly shows that within the majority of cases the amount of lint produced from the amount of N applied is outside the optimum, highlighting that there is opportunity for increased production with current levels of fertiliser input if the influencing factors are better understood. In addition the results also showed that there are farming systems that enable NFUE to be optimised without sacrificing lint yield.

Nitrogen (N) nutrition of high yielding cotton crops remains one of the biggest production costs with improvement of nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) being somewhat of an enigma when trying to ensure that profitability and efficiency are both optimised. When attempts to improve NUE are centred on tweaking N rates, application timing and products only, the outcomes are frequently fruitless, confusing and seasonally contradictory. This is generally because they are made in the absence of close consideration of the other major factors that control NUE. NUE is not just related to N fertiliser practices but is intimately related to soil characteristics and condition, their reaction to irrigation practices, and weather conditions