Program and proceedings index. - This conference will be far more than just a research conference. This changed format is the result of grower and researcher response to questionnaires following the Toowoomba conference. A significant part of the agenda will be devoted to discussions on market outlook and other matters of relevance to the industry.

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One of the notable features of the SIRATAC pest management system is that its use followed extremely quickly on its initial formulation. Most of SIRATAC's development therefor, has occurred in the commercial environment. A users of the program now range from the Macquarie valley to emerald much work has been gone into making the program regional specific.

The 2016 Australian Cotton Conference – New Frontiers was the cotton industry’s 18th conference held over a 36 year span.

The Australian cotton industry has experienced a vast array of change over this 36 year period. As the cotton industry has developed, so too has the Australian Cotton Conference. What began primarily as on-farm, cotton growing-centred research sharing of knowledge, has now extended to all sectors of industry from research to processing and in more recent times it has been inclusive of post farm gate mechanisms so that our complete supply chain process from “dirt to shirt” is examined.

Conference is a key industry forum and an important focal point for R&D knowledge sharing. As such, Conference promotes a collective sense of industry identity, direction, connectivity, and purpose.

For 2016, a Conference Committee was formed from Cotton Australia members, Australian Cotton Shippers Association members and representatives from other industry organisations and sectors (including CRDC, CSD, growers, the R&D sector, agronomists and young industry representatives) to oversee the conference program and activities that contributed to a successful conference. The Committee, guided by the Board and Executive of both organisations, was responsible for implementing program initiatives.

The 18th Australian Cotton Conference provided a platform to showcase the Australian cotton industry and enhance the outputs from CRDC funded R&D and extension activities to the industry at large.

The conference provides for the largest gathering of industry participants in any calendar year and delegates were presented with information in various formats during the conference program that demonstrated and extends improvements in outcomes for the industry.

Industry was challenged to share information, discuss, debate and respond to and adopt findings of research and projects around maximising individual and industry profitability and sustainability through the adoption of home-grown R&D.

Two, two hour Human Resource Information Workshops in September, 2016. Expert consultants were engaged to present. Event participants were asked to identify specific human resource topic areas, with the following issues addressed:

• Staff Motivation

• How to have happy and content employees

• Incentives to use to retain staff

• Learning how to be a good employer

• Attracting and retaining staff

• Managing internal staff discontent

• Employer obligations

• Structured feedback mechanisms to manage staff friction

• Communication

• Workplace agreements and getting staff sign off as well as feedback and review.

• What is a reasonable level of remuneration

• Hourly or Salary

• How do we handle shift work and the pay/work balance

• Individual Flexible Agreements

• Industry Awards

• Other workplace benefits like house, power, fuel and how to manage

• Online induction

• Fatigue Management

• Communication with staff

• Performance and KPI’s plus feedback (Formal and informal)

• Review of staff performance

• Management of busy and lax periods

• Employer arrangements

• Managing expectations

With a total of 20 participants from the cotton growing region, 10 at each venue, a robust discussion about the above areas resulted with information sharing creating networking between famers.

All participants were encouraged to register for myBMP and access the resources there. In all, five growers were not sure if they were registered of which three were (but had not used it) and two were new registration. All growers were shown the HR checklist items in myBMP and encouraged to operate at at least level 2.

This paper reports the initial results from testing different versions of the SIRATAC pest management system in the Namoi Valley for two seasons the experiments were designed to investigate the ability of the program to manipulate crop earliness according to criteria set by the crop manager.

The cotton bollworm, Heliothis armiger is a very important cotton pest in Australia. It has a long history of insecticide resistance in Australia, to DDT in the early 1970's and to the pyrethroids in 1983,.In 1976, entomologists from the New South Wales Department of Agriculture at Tamworth began a nation wide resistance monitoring program for H. armiger. Each year Heliothis, collected mainly from New South Wales and Queensland cotton sites, are sent to the Tamworth Agricultural Research Centre for testing. The progeny from the moths in each sample are reared.in the laboratory on an artificial diet and are tested with insecticides when they reach 30-40 mg weight. Varying concentrations of insecticides dissolved in solvents, are tested against Heliothis by putting a I ul drop on each caterpillar back and count the number dead after 48 or 72.hours. Mortality is plotted against concentration and we calculate the.LD50 (the concentration required to kill 50% of the test group) and the slope of the line (a measure of the variation of response to the insecticide)..We test all insecticides which are used against H. armiger and those with potential for use.

Different cultivars are now becoming commercially available including Australian bred cultivars, and cotton growers now have a choice of which cultivar to plant. Hence, the question is, do the different cotton growing regions in Australia require different cultivars, and which cultivars are best adapted to each of these regions?

With the appearance of pvrethroid resistance in Heliothis armigera during the 1992/3 cropping season a strategy aimed at limiting the development of widespread resistance was rapidly implemented .H. armigera had previously shown a propensity to a acquire high levels of resistance to other insecticides (e.g. DDT). As part of a number of studies on the genetics and ecology of pvrethroid resistance the work described here was commenced to evaluate the biological fitness of resistant individuals relative to their susceptible counterparts.

In 1981 we released SICOT 3 to the industry. This variety is distinguished by glabrous (ultra-smooth) leaves and stems, and frego bracts (these morphological characteristics and their effects on pests are described in another paper - "Host Plant resistance Studies at Narrabri Research Station by myself, Peter Reid and Gary Fitt). However, besides advantages of Heliothis resistance and fibre quality, these characteristics are associated with less desirable agronomic effects such.as increased vegetativeness and delayed maturity. They also appear to be associated with higher sensitivity to some members of the bug complex, further accentuating rankness of growth and delayed maturity if these pests are not controlled.