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.

Most major pollution offences are criminal offences, which result in criminal proceedings against the offender. They are not civil proceedings commenced by another citizen for compensation. They are criminal proceedings commenced by the State through an appropriate prosecuting authority or enforcement authority such as, in NSW, the Environmental Protection Authority.

As a first step in developing a community education program about IPM it was decided to assess the knowledge and perceptions of members of the rural community to the pest management practices. The project "Assessment of the Potential for Community Based Education Programs on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Cotton", was funded by the Cotton Research and Development Corporation and results of the .survey are responded in this paper.

The Environmental Audit of the Australian cotton industry was a bold initiative at a period in time when the industry was under severe pressure from well organised environmental lobby groups. One course of action could have been to "bury the head in the sand" based on the premise that the pressures would subside when the environmental fad lost momentum. This was not a course the industry regarded as tenable despite concerns within the industry that it would leave it even more vulnerable to attack. The audit was performed. The auditors chose to perform a "Scoping Audit", that is a broad view across the industry to look at the structure. initiatives and impact of the industry cm its environment as a whole. This is significantly different to on-site auditing where all input/outputs are monitored by chemical or physical analysis. The Audit was completed and released in October, 1991. It is now opportune to review the initial impact of the audit.

There are basically three ways of preventing cotton farm runoff from contaminating the riverine. environment: prevent all runoff from reaching a waterbody keep the runoff pure or purify it en route to a waterbody a combination of both, whereby all tail water and most surface runoff is recycled, with contaminants stripped from excessive runoff which escapes the farm.

At the Cotton Conference in 1990. I presented a paper which outlined the broad health and safety issues for the cotton industry in Australia. Health effects for the workforce included traumatic injury. noise induced hearing loss. chemical exposure, respiratory effects of cotton dust and climatic effects. Since that time, the Agricultural Health Unit has been involved in monitoring and research programs involving the cotton industry in the Gwydir and Namoi Valleys and a health and safety profile is being developed with the industry. Cotton industry worker risks are associated primarily with injury and pesticide exposure, although respiratory disease associated with cotton dust requires further research effort.