I have prepared these notes for our meeting of July 2S. They describe some of the activity of many people who have given us insight into the processing characteristics of eight major cotton varieties grown at Narrabri and Merah North in the Namoi valley. As the industrial practice of blending bales into a mix always loses the varieties' identity, the trial provided a rare look at the pure varieties in yam and fabric form, u well as their behaviour throughout spinning, knitting, preparation and dyeing. The possibility of converting them into varietal garmentss remains, but is beyond the present budget.

A number of laboratory experiments have been run since 1989 to address the area of distribution variation. Of these experiments, the latest two (A and B) have compared 10 different metering and distribution systems, compiled of current commercial metering systems fitted with their commercial distribution/manifolds systems and the same metering systems fitted with a range of prototype manifold distributors or other attachments developed during the previous experimental phase

This project supports the maintenance of fibre testing facilities at the Australian Cotton Research Institute. The major activities are associated with the cotton breeding program with close to 20,000 samples being processed each year in the three months after harvest. This procedure enables early generation testing of fibre properties where inferior types can be culled from further testing.,

Objectives To continue the development and validation of a series of micro-computer based decision support packages (initially hydroLOGIC and entomoLOGIC) under the generic name CottonLOGIC.,

The recent pioneering attempts of several cotton growers to produce organic cotton presents an opportunity to monitor pest populations in the absence of synthetic insecticides. The study of alternative pest control practices has the potential to reduce our reliance on insecticides and thus help to overcome resistance problems. Therefore the insect populations of two organically grown cotton crops were monitored as part of a wider study funded by the Cotton Research and Development Corporation into the effects of organic treatments on beneficial and pest insects. Three areas were involved in study: the Darling Downs (Queensland; J. Bidstrup), the Maquarie (N.S.W.; J. O'Brien) and the Macintyre (N.S.W; D. & B. Coulton). This report covers the sites at Boggabilla and North Star in the Macintyre district of northern N.S.W.

The objectives of this project were to sample Gossypium sturtianum (Sturt's Desert Rose) in the Flinders and Barrier Ranges and multiply the samples for research and conservation. The area for exploration forms the southern boundary of the genus. Specimen records from major herbaria were used. to plan the field trip. This was carried out 8-19 February, and samples of individual capsules were obtained from 23 sites. including the .three most southerly populations, and eight new populations. This represents a substantial sampling of a very rare plant. The typical habitat for the species was a well drained bank of a dry creek, protected from winter exposure and with local air drainage. Throughout the area of study. the plant was very rare. At about one third of the sites, only a single plant was found and only four sites had appreciable populations. Most populations showed little .sign of herbivore damage. Plants have been established from the seed samples in the glasshouse at Canberra and seed will be harvested, evaluated and processed for storage over the subsequent twelve months as part of the germplasm program

In this and a related project funded by ARC, four fungal isolates of each of two common species were compared for their effect on plant growth. From this research we have concluded that the variation within one species is as great as the variation between species of VAM fungi. The first aim was to develop our understanding of each fungus so that we could predict the effect that fungus would have on growth of cotton. The practical consequence of our work is that knowing the species of fungus present in a soil provides us with little capacity to predict how it will influence plant growth

This project focused on the control of nutgrass. Nutgrass (Cyperus rotundus) is considered to be the world's worst weed and inf es ts over 15% of the cotton growing area. Nutgrass adversely affects cotton by competition for light, nutrients and water, and indirectly through lint c ontamination. reduced irrigation efficiency and increased soil problems. The project assessed the effects of herbicides, cultivation and rotation crops on nutgrass control using a number of field experiments located throughout the NSW cotton area. Most of these experiments will run for at least 2 seasons. but only the results of the first season are covered in this report.

Aim: To investigate the sensitivity or tolerance of Australian cotton varieties to levels of UV-B expected to exist in the foreseeable future

To develop cotton varieties capable of germinating and establishing in cool soils, seed of Siokra S324 was mutated to induce variation. Ii. was anticipated that increased levels of unsaturated fatty acids in seed oil would lead to more rapid cotton-seed germination in cold soils, as had been observed in sunflowers.