The need to develop marketing strategies for the Australian cotton crop appears to be imperative. If we are to continue to develop nev.1 cotton varieties. lt is essential to be able to place these into the market profitably. We believe the current marketing experience with Siokra is a critical Illustration of how important a very good marketing strategy is if we are to develop markets that will continue to ensure long term demand for our cotton. The all Important quality criteria must be strictly adhered to. Our suggest ion is tr1at the cotton industry requires a formal marketing organisation to perform several important tasks:

On many occasions, we saw some parts of our farm, produce this 3 bale yield, but not over a whole field. One corner ,or one side, or a top or bottom end, but not all over. There is not good value in growing 3 bales in one corner and 1.5 in the other. There seemed to be no distinct pattern of where these best yields would occur. We tried many different practices including chisel ploughing, ripping, and jumbo-busting, but the variation still remained. By 1981 we had a five year average yield of 1.8 bales/acre.

Throughout this article I will be encouraging less tillage. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, tillage is costly. Secondly, soil structure often is sufficiently good for farming without tillage. Thirdly, soil moisture conditions are seldom right for effective tillage: there is always the danger that tillage will be harmful to soil structure.

Firstly, it is important to define "Minimum Tillage" as it applies to our operation. Our objective in achieving such a system is more correctly described as a "Permanent Bed'' system i.e. we have totally directed our efforts to maintaining the same bed. In discussing this subject and the methods we have tried it is also important to point out that our experience is confined to the heavier soil types of the Lower Gwydir System.

This project was prompted by disappointingly low cotton yields at Emerald and other Central Queensland centres. The aims of the project are to provide a basis for sound irrigation management of cotton through studies of ( i) Crop response to a range of irrigation management options in terms of crop irrigation efficiency (yield per unit water applied) and plant fruiting development. (ii) Soil water balance in relation to irrigation application efficiency (infiltration per unit water applied), crop water use, ground-water accessions and model predictions of all these factors.

Answers to the questions : How do I find and use probes for scheduling irrigations? Are they used as the only scheduling tool? How do we use our water most effectively? Identification of end points; (Field Capacity and Refill Point) Other uses for the probe.

Each furrow irrigation waterlogs most of the root zone of cotton in cracking clay soils. This deprives the roots of oxygen, they take up less water and nutrients. and this reduces growth and yield. Recent research at Narrabri has measured how much yield is lost through waterlogging, how much can be recovered by the tactical use of foliar applied N fertilizer, and to what extent irrigation management can reduce waterlogging.

Managing riparian vegetation for multiple benefits

A research project at the Australian Cotton Research Institute, Narrabri aims at developing biocontrol agents for cotton seedling diseases and Verticillium wilt. This paper describes some of the aspects concerned with the project.

Commercial cotton crops throughout NSW have been surveyed in November and March of each season since 1983 to determine disease distribution, incidence and severity. Cropping history, field preparation, seed rate, plant stand and the amount of crop residue remaining from the previous cotton crop have been recorded for each field inspected. Between 80 and I 00 commercial fields have been inspected in each survey.