2015 marked 25 years of CRDC. In this special publication, CRDC takes a look back at 25 years of delivering research, development and extension (RD&E) outcomes for the benefit of Australia’s cotton growers, the cotton industry and the wider community.

This publication outlines the 25 major achievements in cotton RD&E over the past 25 years: 25 key areas in which the co-investment into RD&E by cotton growers and the Australian Government has significantly benefited the industry - like our strong improvements in water use efficiency; our efforts to improve environmental performance; our contributions to building the capacity of the industry’s most important resource, its people; and our contribution to the industry’s best management practices program. These are all examples where investment in RD&E has helped to deliver highly valuable outcomes.

The publication also features 25 key industry people who provide their thoughts on CRDC and the contribution of cotton RD&E.

The 40 year anniversary of the construction of the Fairbairn Dam and Emerald Irrigation Scheme prompted the

Central Highlands Cotton Growers & Irrigator's Association (CHCG&IA), alongside motivated growers and industry personnel, to commence

production of a book that will encapsulate the history behind the

development of a resilient and reliable cotton production valley. Captured within these pages, is a history through the words of those involved, with personal recounts from irrigator's - both past and present, industry representatives and those involved with

the construction of the dam. This project provided funding to assist with the research and compilation of the history.

This proposal builds on many years of weeds work supported by CRDC and aims to value add to the earlier work, while providing strategic information to cotton growers in support of MyBMP, based around updating WEEDpak, the Guide to Integrated Weed Management in Cotton.The project aims to develop and expand strategic areas of WEEDpak, providing:• Up-to-date guidelines for Integrated Weed Management in the Roundup Ready Flex system,• Up-to-date information on key weed questions in MyBMP,• More and better information on the potential for damage issues from herbicides used in other parts of the farming system, and• An improved, more user-friendly and more robust weed control threshold for cotton.

The project uses a combination of field and glasshouse experiments, laboratory studies and observations in commercial cotton fields, in collaboration with the weeds work undertaken by researchers at QDPI, Toowoomba.

Work will continue on the weed threshold, with analysis of 8 years of data to re-develop a weed biomass-based threshold, improving on the current density based threshold which doesn’t adequately allow for staggered weed germination. This work will be written up in a series of scientific papers and submitted as a PhD by the Principal Researcher. The work will be supplemented by experiments to validate the weed control threshold using the background weed population, supplemented to ensure strong weed pressure, manipulated with a range of timings and number of applications of glyphosate. An infra-red sensor (GreenSeeker ™) is used to estimate weed biomass.

The weed growth and development information will be validated using a large number of 200 L drums at ACRI, which will be filled with soil and flood irrigated according to normal practices. The drums closely mimic field conditions, but allow individual weeds to be studies without the complications of competition and other field issues. The work will be undertaken as a PhD, supervised through UNE, Armidale, with assistance from the field staff in this project for much of the initial work. The work will complement work by the QDPI team at Toowoomba, who will use at number of large, controlled environment chambers to examine the seasonal requirements for weed emergence, and additional work at ACRI using our 4 germination cabinets. The research will examine 18 weeds which have been identified as being at high risk of developing herbicide resistance (analysis from the QDPI group) and are weeds which are showing up in the Monsanto weed audits as being problematic in Roundup Ready Flex crops. This weed set will be covered in both the QDPI and this project. The project will also cover additional species which are currently in the WEEDpak Weed Growth & Development Guide.

The field experiments will be conducted at the ACRI, Narrabri, with treatments applied at various crop growth stages. Experiments will use detailed crop measurements to assess the post-treatment impact of treatments on cotton plants, monitoring plant height and development, leaf number and area, squares, flowers and bolls throughout the season, and crop yield, fibre quality and time to maturity. The research will expand the Herbicide Damage Guide to cover 29 different herbicides, including information on the identification of herbicide damage and detailed information on the likely consequences of damage on subsequent crop growth and development. Additional detailed work will also be undertaken on 2,4-D damage, and the crop’s response to post-damage management.

Work will continue on the weed threshold, with analysis of 8 years of data to re-develop a weed biomass-based threshold, improving on the current density based threshold which doesn’t adequately allow for staggered weed germination. This work will be written up in a series of scientific papers and submitted as a PhD by the Principal Researcher. The work will be supplemented by experiments to validate the weed control threshold using the background weed population, supplemented to ensure strong weed pressure, manipulated with a range of timings and number of applications of glyphosate. An infra-red sensor (GreenSeeker ™) is used to estimate weed biomass.

The weed growth and development information will be validated using a large number of 200 L drums at ACRI, which will be filled with soil and flood irrigated according to normal practices. The drums closely mimic field conditions, but allow individual weeds to be studies without the complications of competition and other field issues. The work will be undertaken as a PhD, supervised through Dr. Brian Sindel at UNE, Armidale, with assistance from the field staff in this project for much of the initial work. The work will complement work by the QDPI team at Toowoomba, who will use at number of large, controlled environment chambers to examine the seasonal requirements for weed emergence, and additional work at ACRI using our 4 germination cabinets. The research will examine 18 weeds which have been identified as being at high risk of developing herbicide resistance (analysis from the QDPI group) and are weeds which are showing up in the Monsanto weed audits as being problematic in Roundup Ready Flex crops. This weed set will be covered in both the QDPI and this project. The project will also cover additional species which are currently in the WEEDpak Weed Growth & Development Guide.

The field experiments will be conducted at the ACRI, Narrabri, with treatments applied at various crop growth stages. Experiments will use detailed crop measurements to assess the post-treatment impact of treatments on cotton plants, monitoring plant height and development, leaf number and area, squares, flowers and bolls throughout the season, and crop yield, fibre quality and time to maturity. The research will expand the Herbicide Damage Guide to cover 29 different herbicides, including information on the identification of herbicide damage and detailed information on the likely consequences of damage on subsequent crop growth and development. Additional detailed work will also be undertaken on 2,4-D damage, and the crop’s response to post-damage management.

In addition to the research highlighted in this application, the project will allow the researcher to continue his role in advising cotton growers on weed issues, giving expert technical advise to the TIMS Herbicide Tolerant Crop Technical Panel and continuing to review pesticide applications on behalf of NSW DPI for the APVMA that involve the cotton farming system.

Financial performance benchmarking studies have identified increasing fertiliser input costs in the cotton industry. Farm profitability has been eroded as a result of an emerging trend by cotton growers to apply high rates of nitrogen fertiliser. Many growers believe 300+ kgN is required to grow the latest commercially available cotton varieties and achieve potential yields of 14-15 bales per hectare.

Further research is required to validate these claims that high nitrogen (N) fertiliser inputs are necessary to achieve high yields. High N inputs may in fact be the product of poor nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) where a significant proportion of the N applied is either lost through denitrification, volatilisation, run-off or leaching processes, or simply not utilised.

This project will collaborate with other nitrogen related research projects to build a comprehensive understanding of nitrogen loss pathways in cotton farming systems. The research will focus on the impact of various irrigation and nitrogen (N) application strategies on N uptake, nitrogen use efficiency, fibre quality and yield.

Trial results will be shared with collaborating researchers to develop irrigation and nitrogen management recommendations to assist growers optimise N fertiliser applications, improve nitrogen use efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve farm profitability.

This project provides the foundation for greater cotton agronomy research and development capacity within NSW DPI.

NSW DPI is committed to establishing a fully funded permanent position at Narrabri and is currently progressing through the recruitment phase. Dependant upon the experience of the successful research officer the project will focus strongly on professional development and building expertise in cotton agronomy by linking in with existing research projects and establishing collaborative relationships.

This project relates to management of the following programme items for CRDC: Inside Cotton is a complete online historical record library of all information relating to research and industry. representing. Final Report s to date for all Research projects are accessible at www.insidecotton.com. The Primary Industry Health and Safety Partnership(PIHSP) is a collaborative partnership working together under the flag to communicate the National Farm Safe Message. The Aboriginal Employment Scheme(AES) and CRDC have a 12 year partnership for the placement of Year 10 Aboriginal students into a two year work placement programme in an industry position of interest.

The summer edition of CRDC's magazine, Spotlight, shines a light on the triple threat of insects, diseases and weeds facing cotton growers, as a result of so much spring rain. This edition includes CRDC's latest pest research results, which highlight the need to practice sound Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It also takes a look at CRDC's latest investments into disease research, which have doubled in response to grower feedback, with a particular focus on verticillium. And it delves into the issue of herbicide resistance in weeds, investigating CRDC's investments into robotic and alternative methods of control.

Also in this issue, we introduce CRDC's new chair Richard Haire, our newest Nuffield scholar Daniel Kahl, and two of this year's Future Cotton Leaders, Emma Ayliffe and Dave Walton. We also take a look at how the industry's research priorities are set in the annual CRDC Strategic Forum, and provide a snapshot of CRDC's major achievements during 2015-16.

Rapid customisation is a way of creating physical products directly from digital design files through computer-controlled manufacturing. Perhaps the most widely known approach to rapid customisation currently is 3D printing, where machines can build up a physical object layer by layer from a digital model. The cost to the consumer of 3D printers has been steadily decreasing and consumer models are now small enough to fit easily on a desktop. Market trends suggest that in the future these machines may be as inexpensive, readily available and as reliable as desktop ink-jet printers are today.

This technology promises to have far reaching impacts on many sectors of industry and everyday life. It could mean for example, that consumers could print out objects themselves at home rather than having to purchase them from a store. It is also likely to allow new forms of manufacturing including novel combinations of materials, which have not been possible or economically feasible to achieve previously.

One of the key challenges for research into rapid customisation is to broaden the range of different kinds of materials that can be used as a source of feedstock. The aim of the project is to assess the technical and economic feasibility of using cotton-derived materials as a feedstock in rapid customisation processes where cotton has a particular advantage due to its inherent qualities, such as high cellulose content, biodegradability and natural fibre qualities. Our objectives are to:

1. Survey the range of available rapid customisation techniques and assess their suitability for cotton-derived feedstock

2. Investigate the ways that cotton could be processed to provide an input into a rapid customisation process and assess their feasibility

3. Provide design visions for potential end-user applications of cotton-based rapid customisation techniques with indicative market potential.

Robots will change the way we do things, including the way we farm.

Robotic enabled weed control is an evolutionary step in precision agriculture and the dawn of weeding robots is upon us. Over the past 10 to 15 years a lot of investment in robotics research, and the tools that may be fitted to them, have occurred world-wide but few have been commercialised into relevant, practical and therefore functional farm assets. Lack of development investment and subsequent commercialisation are the current barriers to adoption of this technology.

Simply, an agricultural weeding robot consists of hardware and software - a self-steered (unmanned) and propelled platform that hosts an array of weed detection units that in turn activate an array of weeding tools whether that be a spray nozzle, microwave unit or tillage tool as examples.

Within Australia, four agricultural unmanned ground vehicles (UGV or robotic platforms) have been built. Most are still in the prototype testing stage; these include the Ladybird, RIPPA (both from Field Robotics Research Centre, University of Sydney), and AgBotII (Queensland University of Technology). Only one – Swarmbot (SwarmFarm Robotics) has been commercially launched and that occurred in late March 2016.

Currently there are only three weed detection/sensing units commercially available in Australia and they include Weedseeker and WeedIT, and more recently the H-Sensor originating from Europe. H-Sensor is able to detect green from green while the other two units detect green from brown which means the former is ideal for in-crop use and the latter are best utilised in fallow.

In it evident in the literature that many weeding tools and non-herbicidal tactics (eg. steam) have been developed but few have been commercialised or are not readily accessible for robotic application. Currently, microwave technology and a targeted tillage implement for weed control are being developed in Australia; the latter for the grains industry to tackle herbicide resistant weeds, but it too is not being developed for robotic enablement.

A brief overview of current weed management practices and the main weed issues of Australian cotton production systems have been described. Herbicide resistance development and species-shifts due to over-reliance on glyphosate arising from the advent of glyphosate tolerant varieties; as well as the management of rogue (volunteer and ratoon) cotton are the major current foci of cotton weed management. Based on this, the areas where robotic enabled weed management might fit have been identified. It is not the intent that robots should undertake all on-farm weed management tasks, but rather the more tedious and time consuming tasks that require maximum efficacy results. The key opportunities include but are not limited to:

• Spot spraying of weeds and rogue cotton plants in-crop and in fallow – low density situations or escapes of broadcast weed management applications; or odd patches of hard-to-kill and or resistant weeds; using alternate modes of action products.

• As above but by spot tillage (or other non-chemical treatment).

• Application via spot or patch spraying of effective but expensive herbicides that might not otherwise be used due to their cost.

• Weed surveillance – monitoring and mapping weeds in the paddock; the grower knows exactly where his weeds and issues are; monitoring for herbicide resistance survivors; becomes the eyes!

Finally, two specific areas where the CRDC might consider further investment in the short to medium term are suggested.

Each year, Crop Consultants Australia - with support from CRDC - conduct a qualitative survey of cotton consultants regarding their practices and attitudes, as well as those of their cotton grower clients. The resulting report provides valuable information to the Australian cotton industry regarding on-farm practices , helping to benchmark the industry's performance in a range of key areas over time. This report, published in December 2016, looks at the 2015-16 cotton growing season.

CRDC engaged BDA Group to undertake a triple bottom line evaluation of two completed projects that were known to have had a significant industry impact. While this evaluation forms part of a broader examination of investment projects funded by Australian Rural Research and Development Corporations, it also provides an indication of the nature and extent of gains that the CRDC has been able to achieve on the funds that they manage. Although the CRDC’s primary investment focus is to enhance the international competitiveness of the Australian cotton industry, they have been able to deliver significant environmental and broader social gains to the Australian community.

This report presents the triple bottom line evaluation of CRDC’s investment in managing pest resistance in transgenic cotton and the development and commercialisation of the Irrimate technology. The report found that when compared to the total investment portfolio, the two hero projects examined in this study provide an indication of the minimum average return on funds invested across all projects and activities supported by the CRDC. It was estimated that the pay off from CRDC investment over four years of operation was considerable, both on levy payer funds and matching funds provided by the Federal government:

Levy Payers – an estimated return of $13 for every dollar invested.

Industry as a whole – an estimated return of $12 for every dollar invested.

Australia – an estimated return of $30 for every dollar of matching funds provided.