Irrigated farm businesses currently face a number of problems--reduced water allocations and river flows, increased climate variability, and economic pressures. In order to remain profitable and increase the productivity of water supplies, urgent action is required.

The National Program for Sustainable Irrigation was a unique collaboration as it involved governments, irrigators, water providers and researchers from across Australia. It covered every aspect of irrigation from dam management and water delivery, through on-farm management, to sustainable landscape environmental measures

Irrigated farm businesses currently face a number of problems--reduced water allocations and river flows, increased climate variability, and economic pressures. In order to remain profitable and increase the productivity of water supplies, urgent action is required.

The objective of this study was to simulate water requirements of an OH system applied to a hypothetical citrus orchard. The potential impact on drainage, nutrient leakage and salt accumulation in the root-zone was determined. The practicalities of management for optimum performance of OH under these conditions are discussed.

* Focus on Southern Rural Water * New sustainable irrigation program * Project update * PRD makes Top 100

* Report card on National Program * Getting the best out of NWC funding

Current knowledge concerning the potential use of GA technology in optimising irrigation water order scheduling is limited to research findings from Project UAD14. These findings indicated that GA technology is capable of scheduling 350 - 400 irrigation water orders to achieve desired outcomes. The technology is suitable for batch-processing orders to generate initial schedule plans.

The Australia-wide Program for Sustainable Irrigation will take a quantum leap towards irrigation sustainability in Australia. It will orient irrigation research towards critical emerging sustainability issues while improving the productivity of irrigated agriculture and fostering community development. This is the natural resource management challenge facing Australia - to build productive and sustainable land use systems.

The National Program for Sustainable Irrigation convened a one-day national workshop to investigate the current use of different methodologies to estimate crop water use and possibly to initiate establishment of national standards for methodologies to estimate irrigated crop water balance and crop evapotranspiration (Etc).