Auscott's Midkin property at Moree has a long history of environmental and riparian management. It's been 14 years since work on the regeneration of riparian areas was initiated at Midkin back in 2001.

After 2 light mite years (1991/92 and 1992193) the cotton industry experienced a season in which outbreaks of mites were widespread. In most regions mites were reported from seedling cotton and mite populations began to increase in mid-December to early-January, about a month earlier than usual. A number of factors contributed to produce the potential for such outbreaks to occur and other factors made management of outbreaks very difficult. The key factors involved, as I see them, are detailed below.

The value of lucerne as a trap crop for cotton pests has been recognised in America for some time (Deloach and Peters 1972, Robinson et al. 1972, Sevacherian and Stern 1974). The major use of this cultural control technique in America has been for trapping the Lygus bug. Although possibilities of strip cropping for insect control have drawn considerable interest from Australian farmers, few studies have been done on the effects of strip cropping on the pest/predator complex of Australian cotton. Mirids, the Lygus bug's Australian relative, are an occasional pest of cotton in the Macquarie valley of NSW. An experiment was devised to determine the effect of strip cropped luceme on the spatial and temporal distribution of pests, including mirids and Helicoverpa, and predators within a commercial cotton crop.

From a humanised viewpoint cotton may be thought of as a lazy plant. It "employs" microscopic fungi to do some of the hard work of collecting nutrients from the soil. This type of relationship, a symbiosis, is known as a mycorrhiza (literally: "fungus root"). Usually both partners in a mycorrhiza benefit from the relationship.

The overall aim of the project is to examine the response of cotton to Pix (mepiquat chloride) under different growth rates in the Macquarie Valley. The plan is to target a variety of cotton crops over two to three seasons that have dissimilar growth rates and fruit retention. The work will evaluate whether research completed at Myall Vale Research Station (near Narrabri), is pertinent to the shorter season growing conditions of the Macquarie Valley or otherwise.

We have conducted in field experiments for the past two years to develop a food product that can be used to attract, conserve and augment natural enemies especially predatory insects in cotton fields and utilized them as basic components of IPM programme to manage Helicove1pa spp and other pests on cotton. The results of these experiments are reported here.

The HEAPS (HE.licoverpa d.rmigera and l!.imctigera Simulation) model embodies all of our current knowledge on the ecology of Helicoverpa within cotton cropping regions. It differs from other models of Helicoverpa population dynamics in two main ways. Firstly it operates over an explicitly defined spatial representation of the agricultural landscape within the region being simulated, and secondly it simulates multiple sub-populations of Helicoverpa, each of which have their own demography and resistance gene frequencies. By necessity the model is a simplification of the real world, and there are many underlying assumptions governing its predictions. The HEAPS model is still in the process of being validated on a regional scale, and therefore the accuracy and precision of its predictions remain to be proven. However the model has already been a useful research tool for studying a range of issues relating to the regional population ecology of Helicoverpa. It is in this regard that we outline the use of the model to simulate the demographic and genetic response of H. armigera populations to IRM strategies (see Tabashnik, 1990)

Questions are often raised about whether trace elements are required on cotton. Zinc deficiency has been confirmed in areas where topsoil has been removed, and zinc application is common in many areas, despite a lack of evidence for a general zinc response. More recently, copper has been proposed as deficient in some areas. With this background it was decided to sample soil and plants from a number of cotton fields from Warren to Boggabilla. The soil was sampled to 30 cm depth as near to planting time as possible. Leaf and whole plant samples were taken from the same fields during flowering. These samples were analysed for zinc, copper, iron and manganese. In addition plant samples were taken at regular intervals from experiments at Narrabri to determine the pattern and extent of uptake of each trace element.

Growers with cotton in their rotations achieve higher returns over the rotation cycle, compared with growers with solely grainbased rotations. And improvements in variety characteristics, performance and technology traits over recent years have simplified the process of growing raingrown cotton making it a safer, more reliable and consistent performer

the industry's researchers and scientists got together in Toowoomba for the Australian Cotton Research Conference (proudly supported by CottonInfo partners CRDC and CSD). Over 130+ research presentations covered the fields of plant, soil and systems; cotton breeding; weeds; entomology; energy; carbon and climate; nutrition; NRM; pathology; irrigation; fibre and processing; and social science. In today's enews, we're bringing you some of the (many) highlights. You can read the abstracts from all 130+ presenters in the Conference booklet.