Bollgard II and selective insecticides have dramatically increased the opportunity for adopting integrated pest management (IPM) in the Australian cotton system. However, reduced or more selective spraying has allowed the emergence of some pests as potential problems, especially sucking pests such as mirids and green vegetable bug.

Fibre quality is an important consideration for Australian cotton farm profitability and industry credibility in the world marketplace. Recent significant issues relating to fibre quality in the industry include maintaining fibre length, prevalence of high micronaire, and the perception of high levels of neps. Fibre development responds directly to the environment, crop management and stresses. Understanding clearly the reasons why these fibre quality issues persist, and why they differ for regions, seasons and for different crop management practices can aid in developing management guidelines. This paper presents a brief summary of: the physiology of fibre development and impacts of agronomy and environmental influences that change the growth of the fibre; consequences of different fibre propeties that are changed in the field and the consquences for textile production; some general recommendations for agronomic management for preserving fibre quality; and a discussion of current dedicated research to further this knowledge and deliver it to benefit the industry.

Australian irrigated cotton growers are committed to improving their water use efficiency for economic, environmental, social and political reasons. The Australian cotton industry is predominantly irrigated by furrow irrigation with siphons. Increasing the performance of such systems generally requires an intensification of the existing labour requirements while the current labour force is dwindling. Various alternatives have and are being considered but there is a lack of data that exists about comparisons of alternatives to fully optimised furrow irrigated field and even more so a lack of data about the individual potential of each system to perform better. The siphon-less project was developed to address this knowledge gap by using the same methods to measure and the same water use efficiency indices to assess the performance of each alternative system and an adjacent furrow irrigated field. Four systems, located throughout the Border Rivers and Lower Balonne catchments, were assessed over the 2005/06 summer including: Overhead Irrigation (Lateral Move), Bank-less Channel, Bank-less Head Ditch and Pipes Through the Banks. The following water use efficiency indices were calculated: Gross production Water Use Efficiency Index, Application Efficiency and Distribution Uniformity. In addition final infiltration rates, gross margin including development, operational and input costs were generated for each field under investigation. Results have demonstrated that the siphon-less irrigation systems compared reasonably well and in one case exceeded the water use efficiency of the adjacent furrow irrigated field. The development of siphon-less systems is more costly while the operating costs vary between systems. All systems have shown that there is still room for improvement. While furrow irrigation with siphons remains the pre-dominant irrigation method of the Australian cotton industry efforts towards improving the performance of this system still remains of paramount importance.

In agricultural systems, soil quality is thought of in terms of productive land that can maintain or increases farm profitability, as well as conserving soil resources so that future farming generations can make a living. Management practices which can modify soil quality include tillage systems and crop rotations. A large proportion of cotton grown in Australia has been grown with various rotation crops (mainly cereals) with corn and vetch increasing in recent years. Wheat rotation crops can improve soil quality indicators such as subsoil structure, salinity and sodicity under irrigated and dryland conditions, while leguminous crops can increase available nitrogen. Generally, soil organic carbon is unaffected by rotations crops and it is uncertain whether rotation crops change cotton water use efficiency. Profitability of cotton-rotation crop sequences varies with the relative price of cotton to wheat. Cotton-rotation crop sequences may be more resilient to price increases in fuel and fertiliser due to lower overall input costs.

Achievable paddock yields now frequently overreach the science and yields upon which our current crop nutrition practices are based. To date managing high yield cotton has been done with a lack of verifiable evidence based strategies but more based on seasonal tactics. In the current atmosphere of high yield expectations, increasing nutrient prices, and varying cotton prices, continuation of the increasing nutrient addition approach poses risks both to the stability of production and the environment. Increasing rates of nutrients applied must be done in a considered and balance approach with nutrient use efficiency keeping pace with increasing yield. A large divergence in this relationship can be an early symptom of increase environmental risk and potential increase in volatility of production economics

There are significant price and profitability challenges for Australian cotton at present and likely into the future. Changes at all levels of the production and processing steps can address the challenges and it will be best if all contribute some innovation. As plant breeders we recognise our responsibility and this paper discusses some of the technical challenges for progress and presents some likely new varieties and traits which may become available in the short to medium term.

The paper is organised to provide some background on the cotton industry and its linkages to regional economies. Attention then turns to the tasks of building the economic capacity of cotton communities.

Within cotton catchment communities a significant proportion of the population is Aboriginal and this proportion is increasing, within a wider community trend towards depopulation of rural Australia1. The long term economic viability of such rural communities - including their ability to sustain a labour supply for rural agribusiness - is therefore linked to the use and enhancement of the Aboriginal social and cultural capital within them

A collaborative research project involving NSW DPI and QDPI&F through the Cotton Catchment Communities CRC has commenced to evaluate the potential for aquaculture on cotton farms. The objectives of the NSW DPI component of the project are to: (i) determine optimal culture conditions (stocking density, diets, cage size and shape) for silver perch; (ii) identify cotton farms and infrastructure with potential for fish culture; (iii) evaluate the feasibility and economics of silver perch cultured in cages using on-farm trials; (iv) determine appropriate fish culture strategies for use on cotton farms. Successful integration of silver perch farming will provide cotton farmers with a diversification that adds significant value to irrigation water, and increases the efficiency of water use and environmental sustainability. Involvement of the highly professional cotton industry could provide the infrastructure and associated skill base to provide a new production platform for silver perch and lead to increased production.

The skin or epidermis of a plant is its outward face to the World and buffers it from changes in temperature and humidity; protects it against threats such as pests and pathogens; helps it extract nutrients from the air and soil and even assists it to disperse its seeds into new and hopefully more favourable places to grow. Many plants have evolved specialized epidermal cells (Figure 1) for some of these functions and scientists are starting to unravel at a detailed molecular level the processes that allow the cells in the plant's skin to develop these specialized roles relative to the adjacent cells that are just the bricks and mortar of the plant (Larkin et al., 2003). Cotton is no different and has developed all sorts of specialized hairs that cover the plants leaves, stems, petioles, petals and roots, but it is the very long hairs on the seeds that first attracted man's interest in cotton and these have driven the domestication and widespread adoption of cotton as a premier agricultural crop for fibre production for textiles.