Travel to cotton conference Karyl-Lee West, Lindsay Campbell

In surface irrigation systems we use beds rather than growing thee crop on the flat for several reasons. The two most important reasons are to assist in the control of water and to avoid water-logging of the cotton; a condition the crop does not enjoy and which can reduce yields drastically. Traditionally, cotton has been grown on one metre beds with furrows either side. In the last ten years "wide beds" or two metre beds, with two rows of cotton planted on a bed having irrigation furrows on 200 cm centres , have been tried in the industry. No surveys are available but the area of cotton planted to w1de beds could be as high as 20,000 ha. In more recent years 75 cm or 30 inch cotton has become topical and a small area of crop is grown commercially under this configuration. This paper restricts most of its discussion to the comparison between the use of one metre and two metrebeds identifying the advantages and disadvantages of both systems. Results of on farm trial work evaluating these two systems is included. A discussion on the role of wide beds with cm row spacings is also included

I have been asked to address three major points: I . Why is risk management important? 2. Does a grower nee-d to know all the details of a market before he can become involved with risk management? 3. What are the main considerations that a grower should assess in managing risk in the current negative market situation and the future?

As more than 94% of the Australian crop is exported, the world situation has greater bearing on the outlook for the Australian grower than most of his competitive counterparts who have the benefit of their own large domestic textile industries to whom they sell the bulk of their production.

A three year investigation is being undertaken at Massey University to study the effect of condensed tannins, heat and solvent extraction upon the nutritive value of cottonseed meal for ruminant and monogastric farm animals. This paper describes the project objectives and presents some of the initial results on cottonseed chemical composition.

Macquarie Agribusiness report on the market for Australian raw cotton includes an overview of the Australian and world cotton industry.

Cotton fibre maturity has several definitions. Synonymous with ripeness, maturity may be that property which increases with the reproductive power of the seed, signalling to the plant that the seed containing part is ready to fall off and be blown away to germinate later. A generally accepted definition is that maturity refers to the level of secondary wall thickening that occurs during the latter half of fibre development. The extent of this thickening influences both chemical and physical characteristics of the fibre. The physical scientist, measures maturity as a function of the fibre wall thickness, expressed in some way, such as degree of thickening, that separates the genetic effect of fibre coarseness.

Assessment of cotton fiber quality has undergone a significant change during the past several years. The older, traditional practice of assessing quality by color, trash and preparation has been progressively replaced by reliance on instruments that measure various physical properties of ginned lint that are not readily obtainable with hand classing. Today, cotton quality evaluation is widely based on the use of high volume instrumentation, or HVI, which is being increasingly adopted all the way from producers to textile manufacturers. In my opinion, high volume instrumentation is one of the most significant developments of recent decades in the technology of cotton development, production, marketing and utilization. HVI technology still is evolving, with expectations that components now being perfected will greatly strengthen the capabilities of HVI to precisely measure the physical properties of cotton that are important to textile processing.