Drought is one of these natural weather phenomena set to accelerate that causes massive losses to agricultural crops, increase land degradation, reduce clean water supplies and thereby inducing malnutrition and starvation, and jeopardise global food security. One potential mitigation is the development of drought resilience in typical cropping soils by using a form of Negative Emissions Technology (NET) called Enhanced Weathering (EW), which is the application of silicate rockdust to soil and/or water. This paper will investigate the ability of rockdust to increase the water holding capacity of two typical Queensland cropping soils and also examine the silicon release from each type of rockdust, as silicon is an important plant element in drought resistance. This paper investigates the potential of Enhanced Weathering (EW), a form of Negative Emissions Technology (NET) to increase the soil moisture holding capacity of two types of Australian cropping soil by application of specific silicate rocks (geomaterials) in rockdust form. The geomaterials of focus are vesicular basalt, bentonite clay, pumice and zeolite.

The aim of this study is twofold, firstly to investigate the potential for specific types of naturally-occurring rocks and minerals (vesicular basalt, pumice, bentonite, zeolite) to improve soil moisture-holding capacity of common Australian cropping soils. Secondly, to analyse the nutrient release of the geomaterial in leached soil with particular focus on silicon.Climate change means that future projections of extreme weather events are set to escalate in frequency and intensity. Four types of geomaterials will be used for rockdust: vesicular basalt; bentonite clay; pumice and zeolite. Using six application rates control (0t/ha), 5 t/ha, 10 t/ha, 20 t/ha, 40 t/ha and 100 t/ha and overnight oven temperatures of 30°C, 35°C, 40°C, 45°C, 50°C, 55°C and 60°C, each treatment started at field capacity. Total water loss was calculated inclusive of soil moisture, geomaterial moisture and water added for field capacity. Initially, there were no clear results indicating that the geomaterials reduced water loss. The bentonite treatments developed cracking at higher temperatures and condensation was evident on the inside of the all of the containers. It was noted that the weights of each treatment were continually decreasing on the scales hinting that water loss had not reached its equilibrium. Further experimentation revealed that the treatments required 6-8 days in the oven to reach this equilibrium, which would be more reflective of drought conditions. However, a final experiment that focused on the sandier soil with bentonite applied at higher rates did conclude with a definite reduction of water loss at 40°C. Nutrient testing on the soils showed that zeolite released the highest amounts of silicon in leached Quilpie soil, however, silicon was not released in the soil water of the Mungindi soil.

Helicoverpa armigera shows a much higher tolerance than Heliothis virescens towards the Cry lAc toxin present in INGARD and BOLLGARD II cotton. Unlike H. virescens, the major pest of cotton in the USA, some H. armigera are able to survive on INGARD cotton as the plants mature. This survival increases the risk of resistance development.

The impact of proteases in the insect gut was identified as a possible explanation of the higher tolerance of H. armigera. This project contributed to testing the hypothesis by identifying the initial cleavage sites in the Cry1Ac toxin exposed to the gut juices of H. armigera. The two major peptide fragments from the digest were separated and the most likely initial cleavage site was identified from the sequence of the fragments and computer-assisted modelling of the three dimensional structure of the toxin. These analyses showed that the initial cleavage was made by chymotrypsin whereas trypsin is the main protease in the H. armigera gut.

With the identification of the amino acid that is the target for the first cleavage in the Cry1Ac toxin, it is now possible to determine if protease activity is the basis for the higher tolerance in H. armigera. It will then be possible to modify the toxin gene slightly to make the toxin more stable in the H. armigera gut. Use of an appropriately modified gene in cotton would make it more effective than INGARD and BOLLGARD II in reducing the risk of resistance. This thesis is available from the CRDC Library.

The CQ Cotton IDO is the key to delivery of emerging, cutting edge research information and knowledge to the Central Queensland Cotton Industry. The direct relevance of southern research to cotton production under the conditions experienced in CQ always has been an issue of debate. This project links the national research to the region through development and extension, with a strong focus on the major industry production issues including but not limited to; disease, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), soils, nutrition and integrated weed management. This project has facilitated locally based research into the CQ Cotton Farming System, in particular focussing on optimising planting date, in terms of yield, quality and use of in-crop rainfall. The CQ IDO position also supports the implementation of national industry-wide programmes such as Best Management Practices (BMP). The CQ IDO position has contributed to the National Cotton Extension Team. This team works on an industry-wide scale and takes a knowledge management approach to deliver grower focused adoption and extension programmes primarily through the Cotton CRC National Priority Teams.

This project used market research to determine the extension needs for healthy soils irrigated cotton areas in NSW and Queensland. Existing information was collated and reshaped into an extension program consisting of training workshops, field days, regional soil forums, published case studies and on farm demonstration sites.

The extension program provided relevant regional information, primarily targeted at agribusiness, consultants, irrigated cotton and grain growers, government agency staff and regional natural resource management bodies.

Twelve case studies were published. A soils web page was rejuvenated on the Cotton Catchment Communities CRC web site and materials were provided to the National Healthy Soils Knowledge Bank. The project financed ten growers and consultants to enable them to attend the National Healthy Soils Forum.

Three regional healthy soil forums were held in Goondiwindi, Narrabri and Hillston.They were well attended with 74 per cent of respondents stating the forums had provided them with information that would change the way they would farm in the future.

Fifteen training workshops on soil nutrition, soil pits, understanding soil testing and property planning were delivered to agribusiness, consultants and farmers. 75 per cent of respondents thought the information in the workshops would increase their profitability, 88 per cent thought it would increase their sustainability and 100 per cent thought the workshops proposed useful indicators to assess soil health.

Other outcomes included:

• Practice change and intended practice change by irrigated cotton and grain managers and landholders

• Improved knowledge of R&D managers and extension providers through market research to ensure well targeted research

• Improved knowledge and collaboration of soils extension providers between regional body staff and Cotton CRC, CSIRO, NSW DPI and Queensland DPI & F in the Condamine, QMDC, Border Rivers, Gwydir, Namoi, Lachlan and Macquarie catchments

The project has met or exceeded all of its milestones. It succeeded in delivering a consistent message across the entire irrigated cotton and grain growing region of eastern Australia. Feedback from the workshops and regional forums indicate than this extension project was effective in changing practice to improve both profitability and sustainability of irrigated cotton and grains through encouraging best management of healthy soils.

The development of farming machinery and digital technology that is able to generate objective information about the status of the soil, water, crops, pasture and animals is quickly changing the way in which farming businesses can be managed in Australia. The emergence of digital agriculture, and the potential this creates for the application of big data analytics in agriculture, signals the initial stage of a fundamental change away from skill based farm management systems that have prevailed until present times towards a more industrialised model of agriculture where decisions are based to a greater degree on objective data. The introduction of the global Positioning System (GPS) in the 1990's was a notable stage of change. The GPS was then augmented with auto steer technology and grain harvester yield monitors. Subsequent developments include seeder and fertiliser applicators with the capacity to vary application rates within a field. More recently again, software applications and cloud data storage facilities have enabled the resulting data to be captured, stored and manipulated, and then used in decision-support tools to guide farm management decisions. Digital agriculture applications have also emerged in the livestock and horticulture sectors and further with telemetric irrigation and water management systems, remote sensing technologies, and instruments for the automated collection of weather and climatic conditions.

Generally speaking, digital information generated by machinery and technology used on farms is owned by the "farmer", although the 'Conditions of Use' agreements that routinely signed by computer software users when they first register, use a particular application typically curtail the users data ownership rights and create exceptions which enable the software provider to use the data in different ways, and often to make that data available to third parties.

concerns about the misuse of digital agriculture data by service providers has led to the development of a "Code of Practise" in the US and New Zealand. There is a range of initiatives that can be adopted by the Australian agricultural sector, to facilitate the more rapid development of digital agriculture systems. The following nine recommendations outline these:

1. Establish an Australian Digital Agricultural Forum

2. Adopt a key principle that farmers own their data

3. Make agricultural data open access

4. Appoint a Farm Data Ombudsman

5. Publicly fund soil and climate data

6. Publicly fund rural mobile and data networks

7. Publish publicly funded agricultural data open access

8. Publicly fund knowledge and not commercial platforms

9. Digital extension pathways are the future

The three cornerstones of CRDC are investment, innovation and impact. Our role is to invest in targeted and strategic research that delivers real benefits to Australian cotton growers and the wider industry, and that underpins a strong, profitable, sustainable and competitive future for cotton.

That is why, in 2015-16, CRDC invested $21 million into 290 RD&E projects in collaboration with 92 research partners and growers who conducted on-farm trials, across five key program areas: farmers, industry, customers, people and performance.

In this, the CRDC Annual Report for 2015-16, we outline the investment we have made in these projects on behalf of growers and the government, along with the resulting innovations and impacts.

Take these, for example: the world's first facility into cotton climate change research, which will help cotton growers prepare for future climate variability; the industry's first resilience assessment, which will help the industry adapt to change; and the industry's first workforce development strategy, which will help growers attract, retain and develop their staff—but three of CRDC's investments in 2015-16.

Soil moisture (SM) can highly vary in space and time, and this can have a significant impact on cotton crop yield and fibre quality. Irrigated cotton accounts for over a quarter of all irrigated agriculture in Australia. With water scarcity increasing due to increased demand across industries and climate change, water use efficiency must continue to improve. The Australian cotton industry is already a world leader in water use efficiency, improving whole farm water use efficiency from 57% to an estimated 70% in the past three decades. The remaining 30% of water is lost across the farm, due to field seepage and evaporation (Roth et al., 2014).

There are limitations with how moisture is currently measured and estimated on a field scale. Technologies such as capacitance probes are only capable of measuring SM in a small area directly around the probe, whereas large scale remote sensing technology such as satellites cannot measure beyond the soil surface. Especially with the rise of new irrigation systems such as bankless irrigation, accurate paddock scale SM measurements will allow growers to better determine their irrigation schedules.

The CosmOz Rover, developed by CSIRO, contains a large-scale cosmic ray probe. Primary cosmic rays from outer space, usually in the form of protons, interact with the atmosphere to form secondary cosmic rays; high energy neutrons. These collide with hydrogen atoms, losing energy, to become fast neutrons, and eventually reach a state of thermal equilibrium. Cosmic ray probes measure the flux of fast neutrons, which is inversely proportional to the amount of hydrogen atoms whether it be in air, water, or organic compounds. As water molecules are the dominant source of hydrogen atoms in soil, then close to the Earth’s surface, SM content can be inferred from neutron fluxes (Desilets et al., 2010).

The CosmOz Rover has a 300 m radius horizontal footprint, and can measure to a depth between 0.1-0.7 m depending on SM content, with saturated profiles only measurable to shallower depths (Hawdon et al., 2014). Cosmic ray measurements are passive, non-invasive and mostly insensitive to variations in soil characteristics such as texture, surface roughness, bulk density and the state of water (Desilets et al., 2010; Zreda et al., 2008). Measurements can be taken at a fixed point for temporal data, or additionally moved around a field/farm for spatial data. Key factors that affect measurements include soil organic carbon.

This technology has been studied with success in natural vegetation and dryland agricultural systems, but has not been trialled with irrigated systems. This novel technology has the potential to provide more representative paddock-scale SM measurements compared to other technologies, as a tool to guide decision making for irrigation schedules and improve water-use efficiency.

This research PhD study is required to intensively study molecular genetic techniques to better understand and then detect neonicotinoid resistance in cotton aphid.Since the introduction of Bt-cotton, secondary pests such as aphids, mites and bugs(examples of neonicotinoids), have become more prominent requiring targeted insecticide control. These sprays have lead to resistance in some species that have caused the chemical control to fail. Spray failures against aphids can permanently tarnish Australia’s reputation for producing high quality lint if failures lead to ‘sticky cotton’. Failures also increase grower costs and the likely hood of unforseen environmental consequences. Recently in Australian cotton there have been control failures against aphids belonging to the insecticide group known as neonicotinoids. This group includes the mainstay cotton seed treatment ‘Cruiser’ and the cost effective foliar spray ‘Shield’. It is now clear with the neonicotinoid failures that the sustainable management of aphids in Australian cotton is at risk. Research to restore neonicotinoid efficacy against aphids should be seen as an industry priority as part of an integrated program to better manage mites and mirids in Australian cotton. Bioassay with synergists will initially be used to characterise resistance as target site or detoxification to narrow a likely molecular based cause. With this knowledge the PhD study will aim to find the point mutation causing neonicotinoid resistance in cotton aphid. Knowing the causing mechanism will simultaneously elucidate the underlying cross resistance implications that are essential for effective resistance management. Once the mechanism is known its genetic sequence will be fully characterised and that will provide the first step in the development of a molecular based test for neonicotinoid resistance monitoring. Most importantly, the PhD study will train a young scientist in both bioassay and molecular genetic methodology for resistance detection. This will bridge the gap in a single scientist between the discipline of bioassay and molecular genetics that are now essential to effective resistance management. The PhD study will also further boost the human capacity available to Australian cotton to manage the ongoing problem of insecticide resistance.

Agri- intelligence targets the increasing complexity of farming enterprise operations arising from increasing availability of data, connectedness of decisions, and seeking to optimise operations more tightly, and at finer scales, than ever before.

This project identified current situational awareness about the diversity and complexity of the decision space in cotton production as well as data and information use and utilisation gaps within the industry. In tandem, the project examined the information flows from the cotton value chain, including a segment-by- segment outline of key issues, data creation and use, and consequences of on-farm decision-making.

The chief outcome of the project is a method for identifying and evaluating digital technology investment opportunities in the Australian cotton industry. The method is informed by the findings from the analysis of on-farm decision-making and for the potential for new information flows from the value chain. This method can inform the case for different agri-intelligence solutions in cotton production and also assist CRDC with decisions about their research investment portfolio to transition the sector towards its goals as set in CRDC’s Futures Program, which seeks to transform the industry to ensure it is more profitable, sustainable and competitive in the next 20 years.

The report closes with a strategy for segmenting on-farm decision-making for future research. This is a detailed method for identifying and evaluating investment opportunities in new digital technologies that can inform recommendations for continued investment in related areas of research.

Dryland/ Irrigated Cotton Belatta, Verticillium Workshop, Points of Interest, Nitrogen trial Blood and Bone vs conventional fertiliser, Spray Workshop