Very few economists are employed in Australian cotton research. Biological researchers often seem to believe that the job of economists is just to "put in the prices" after a new technology has been developed. Certainly, there is confusion amongst scientists about just what an economist does do, or can do. In this paper, I want to outline some of the areas where an expanded economic input into the Australian cotton research programme might be justified. This can be done under three headings: project selection/portfolio management; economic optimisation; technology design and research management.

Selection of the area of irrigated cotton to plant is a perennial problem. Research by the Centre for Water Policy Research (1989) has shown that growers solve this on the basis of their total water allocation and expectations about the price of cotton. Hearn (1988) has shown how the yield of cotton changes in different years with different field allocations of irrigation water, using a cotton water balance model. However, this analysis is in tabular form and difficult to customise to suit individual situations with different land area, water supply, irrigation efficiency, soil water deficit for irrigation, maximum yield, cotton price and variable costs. In this paper, we show how a lookup table of the kind provided by Hearn can be re-formulated as a spreadsheet template in order to simplify the analysis of the underlying lookup table and provide a tool for decision support.

Many cotton growers are asking Why can't Australian cotton mills spin more cotton?" Many hundreds of thousands of bales of cotton are imported into Australia as finished yarns and fabrics - why can't this be Australian cotton through Australian mills? In addition to the domestic market, why can't Australian mills export their product as Australian farmers do

As most cotton is exported the cotton industry has a high exposure to exchange rate fluctuations. Similarly, as credit is such an important part of the cotton enterprise interest rates are an important cost factor.

The past season has been 11 abnormal 11 - how do we define a 11 normal" one? - but abnormal in the sense that significant shifts in trading patterns have occurred. Most striking has been the setback to the Soviet 1989/ 90 crop, hard hit by frost at planting time, together with Pakistan's huge expansion of domestic spindleage. Neither country, therefore, could be looked to for its customary export supply. India's emergence as a considerable provider to world markets was thus fortunate since her medium and short staples proved idea 1 rep 1 a cements for the missing Pakistan styles. And China, the most unpredictable of all, continued to buy

In my paper on the fundamentals of Classing I would like to outline both the traditional style classing and the modern high volume instrument classing.

Establishing a satisfactory stand of cotton is a continuing problem for many growers. Even when the crop is not planted 'too early in terms of the 9: 00 soil temperature there is still a risk involved . A cold snap following planting or numerous different seedling diseases will dramatically reduce the rate of germination and emergence and may even resulting the death of many seedlings. The quality of a particular batch of seed will also effect the reliability of stand establishment.

A problem involving leaf death and fall before all bolls are adequately developed, has occurred in cotton growing areas for some years. Early reports of this date back to at least 1981. In November 1988 and again in 1989 the problem was particularly severe in the Emerald irrigation area with growers suggesting yield losses of 25%.

Mycorrhizas are symbiotic associations between the roots of plants and fungi. They come into existence when the plant's root system becomes infected with an appropriate fungus.