The annual qualitative and quantitative survey project measures the impacts and outcomes of research and production critical to the Australian cotton industry. Crop Consultants Australia (CCA) has collected quantitative and qualitative data for the industry since the early 1990s. The data helps the industry to better understand the impact of research and extension, technology adoption, farming practices and product usage as well as identifying new issues and opportunities.

This project collected and provided quality quantitative and qualitative datasets of good geographical representation (coverage of Australia’s cotton production area) relating to economic, environmental and social factors of Australia’s cotton industry for the seasons 2014/15 – 2016/17. The data collected each year and provided to CRDC is able to be compared with data from other years to determine progress on various issues and changes in management practices.

The data provided to CRDC is utilised by industry for benchmarking, trending and research purposes.

Until 2015, cotton growers in the Dawson Valley had no access to localised, accurate weather forecasting tools and had to rely on information relayed from weather stations located in Biloela which is 116 km away. Thanks to the CRDC’s GrassRoots Grant program in 2015, three growers located in the Dawson Valley now have access to OzForecast services through the strategic placement of weather stations. These weather stations have significantly improved the decision making process of those cotton growers able to access them. However, the provision of timely and accurate data for some of the Valley highlighted the lack of this service in other geographic locations. Due to the topography of the Dawson Valley, the station located at Gibber Gunyah services the growers located on the Western side of the Dawson River but not the growers located on the Eastern side of the Theodore township. It was determined that one additional station, located strategically on the boundaries of three of the growers located on the Eastern side of Theodore would provide much- needed weather information to not only these three growers but an additional two located in the same precinct. Similarly, the weather station located at ‘Glendale’ provides excellent weather knowledge for the 1500 acres cotton planted in this locale but did not transcribe to the surrounding properties, located upstream.The assistance to fund an additional two weather stations has provided the Dawson Valley with excellent and complete coverage of the weather patterns and forecasts, greatly assisting in farm, crop and environment management decisions.

Over the three years of this project, data has been collected on the resistance status of silverleaf whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (MEAM1) to registered insecticides. In response to emerging resistance to the IGR pyriproxyfen, a recommendation to restrict usage of this IPM-compatible product to a 30 day window was adopted for the 2017/18 cotton season. This usage window has remained in place for subsequent seasons and testing indicates that resistance levels have stabilised. This research has been submitted for publication in Austral Entomology and is currently under review.

In 2016 resistance to spirotetramat was detected at two localities in North Queensland. Subsequent research has focused on understanding the underlying genetics of this resistance, and is in preparation for publication. In the most recent season (2018/19) resistance to spirotetramat was found in Emerald, which is the first record in a cotton production region. In response, the IRMS has been changed to restrict the usage of this insecticide to a single use per field (except for fields treated for mealybug which require a double application as per label direction to be effective).

Resistance to acetamiprid was suspected in the Macintyre region near Goondiwindi after the first round of bioassay testing. Further testing couldn’t confirm resistance, suggesting an initial false positive result.

Over the duration of the project, baseline susceptibility testing of products entering the cotton marketplace for control of silverleaf whitefly has been completed. This includes buprofezin, acetamiprid, emamectin benzoate and afidopyropen. A manuscript documenting earlier testing of products including spirotetramat, cyantraniliprole and dinotefuran was published in Austral Entomology.

In response to the widespread outbreaks of silverleaf whitefly, particularly in the 2016/17 season, the project team has actively engaged in extension events facilitated by the CCA and CottonInfo. This has included the production of videos on both resistance monitoring and whitefly parasitism.

Interest in assessing whitefly parasitism has grown steadily over the course of the project and knowledge on how to assess parasitism was presented at workshops run by the CCA at Moree, Dalby and Griffith. Evaluation of the toxicity of newer products against Eretmocerus was undertaken, but further experiments are needed to confirm results before this research can be confidently extended to industry.

The widespread extension of whitefly management issues, including stickiness, resistance and parasitism means cotton agronomists are better informed on the threat whitefly poses and the critical role IPM will play going forward.

CSIRO Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool(TraNSIT) performs a mass optimal routing of vehicle movements between thousands of enterprises, and scales up to provide industry, domain or locality wide logistics costs. This provides the ability to test nfrastructure scenarios that reduce transport costs for thousands of enterprises nationally or with in a region. Transit accounts for features and costs associated with the transport of a commodity across the road/rail network. Transit has been set up for about 98% of agriculture transportion Australia, including, beef, grains, cotton, pigs, dairy, horticulture and rice. It has been used to test the benefits of road upgrades, regulatory changes and calculating transport benefits of strategically (or optimalIy) located processing facilities. For this project, Transit will be applied to estimate the transport travel cost savings several initiatives related to existing and potential rail enabled storage and handling facilities

Growers within the Mungindi Cropping Group felt there was a need to identify profitable summer crop options to grow under dryland conditions in the western growing regions. Whilst winter crop rotations are being used to assist in the reduction of issues such as crown rot and root lesion nematode the addition of a summer crop could add further benefit to the farming system from both a sustainability and profitability point of view. This project is now in its third and final year.

Provide research data to support growers in identifying pathways to incorporate summer crops as a means of improving farming systems efficiency.

This funding supported a workshop aimed to build industry capacity to respond to a biosecurity incursion. A gap analysis for cotton boll weevils was used. Participants worked through the process of an incursion and eradication, with Plant Health Australia (PHA) facilitating the scenario. The activity was delivered as a one-day workshop format where participants from the cotton industry – from growers, to Cotton Australia, CottonInfo staff and government stakeholders – were presented with a fictitious scenario of a cotton boll weevil detection in the Emerald cotton production region and worked through the process of how the pest would be responded to under national arrangements (i.e. the Emergency Plant Pest Response Deed).

• increasing understanding of national Emergency Plant Pest responses

• understanding the industry pest reporting pathways and drivers following the detection

of a suspect Emergency Plant Pest

• delivering effective communication to the cotton industry during a response while meeting confidentiality requirements

• preliminary analysis of available response strategies to eradicate cotton boll weevil.

• Identification of further gaps in preparedness

To maximise improvements in work health and safety, it is vital to have the best available evidence available to understand the risks that exist. In turn, this can help to define the best control solutions to reduce these risks and prevent injury. For the cotton sector, such information can be used with confidence by cotton growers to update and modify myBMP (Best Management Practices) information and enhance their health and safety systems/practices.

While the industry has made significant progress in addressing WHS, there continues to be room for improvement that will not only minimise the burden of injury and costs to cotton growers, but will also significantly reduce the devastating impacts that these incidents can have on individuals, their families and whole communities. Continued diligence and effective use of the injury data to guide improved practices, will be pivotal to facilitating this progression to safer workplaces for all in the cotton sector.

Man-made fibres were initially manufactured to imitate natural fibres for textile applications. With progress in polymer science and fibre engineering technology, many new types of specialty man-made fibres have emerged. These offer very strong functional properties, for example, super-high strength, super-high moisture absorbency, super-high elasticity, electrical

conductivity, flame retardance, antimicrobial and smart materials that can respond to changes in environmental conditions.

Cotton/polyester blends have been the largest volume application of cotton in blends, taking advantage of the preferred comfort properties of the cotton, particularly moisture absorbency. Integrating elastane with cotton has become a major trend in the last 20 years or so, resulting in new stretchy cotton/elastane apparels for sportswear, exercise wear/active wear, leisure garments and other close-fitting garments.

This project examined opportunities for cotton to be “up-blended” with newly emerging high value functional fibres. This was achieved by firstly a comprehensive review on emerging functional fibres, their properties and markets. Laws of blending were examined for predicting the diluting effect of functionality by blending cotton with functional fibres. Based on these reviews, a brainstorming session with textile researchers and a range of other considerations, a list of significant opportunities for high value blends of cotton and functional fibres are suggested to CRDC for consideration in planning future research activities.

Use of cotton in functional textiles can be realised primarily through two routes, namely, (1) functional treatment of cotton and (2) blending cotton with specialty functional fibres, although a combination of the two routes can sometimes be beneficial. This scoping study has focused on the blending route.

The study identified a range of emerging opportunities for cotton to blend with high value functional fibres, including opportunities with large volume market potentials, such as

• A wide range of conductive textiles, including antistatic, radiation and electromagnetic field shielding, and electronic or smart textiles for sensors, actuators, power/signal transmission and energy storage textiles. Blending cotton with different ratios of various conductive fibres can tune the final textiles to the required levels of conductivity for these products.

• High durability cotton blends. Typically, cotton fibres and ultra-high strength filaments (e.g., Dyneema and Kevlar) are spun into core yarns, or cotton and ultra-high strength staple fibres are intimately blended and spun into staple yarns. Markets for high durability cotton blends include durable jeans, motorcycle and other sports, industrial workwear, military apparels, etc.

• Heavy gauge winter and trans-seasonal knitwear. Wool and wool-blend knitwear are disappearing as wool supply diminishes. Pure cotton knitwear has low bulk (low warmth) and low resilience. The opportunity lies in blending cotton with retractable and elastane fibres/filaments to produce high bulk warm knitwear with cotton on the fabric surface to provide comfort.

• Fine gauge cotton-blend warp knitted fabrics. Warp knitting offers higher production rates than weaving, a wide variety of fabric constructions and large working widths. It has the potential to be used as an economical substitute for weaving in light weight fabrics. Very fine count strong yarns can be produced from cotton and man-made filaments by the core-spinning or wrap-spinning methods.

To support growth of a cotton-blended functional textile market, a number of “platform technologies” should be developed or investigated, including:

- Law of Blending for functional textiles. Laws for intimate blends on some properties are used for evaluating functionality compromise due to blending (dilution). There is more work to be done for different functional properties, blended structures and manufacturing methods. Functionality of a blend usually does not follow a simple addition or subtraction of the functionalities of its components. This gives room for optimisation of blends to achieve targeted functional properties within a price bracket

- Cotton-blend structures and manufacturing technology tuned for functional textiles. Currently, cotton blended yarns can be spun into intimate blend singles yarns and core- spun yarns using ring and rotor spinning methods, spun into wrap-spun yarns using hollow spindle wrap-spinning machines, or made into plied yarns on various twisting machines. Cotton yarns and other yarns can be combined into a union fabric during fabric-making. These different manufacturing technologies result in different levels of utilisation of the functional properties in the high-performance fibres in the final products. Improved understanding of the relationships between structure and functionality will help reduce the cost of production of cotton blends and market adoption of functional textiles.

- Functionality characterisation and differentiation. Many functional properties for textiles are adapted from other industries. Testing methods need to be standardised to facilitate product differentiation.

In summary, blending of cotton with functional fibres can lead to a wide range of new opportunities in high value markets for cotton and developments in this area should be supportedbyresearchinanumberoftechnologyareas.

In this project, a novel treatment was investigated to improve whiteness, brightness, softness and dye uptake of cotton yarn and fabric. It uses an eco-friendly amino acid treatment in place of highly concentrated caustic soda used in mercerization process. The treatment can be conducted in yarn package form without needing any additional or specialised equipment. The project has demonstrated through subjective assessment and spectrophotometric measurements that samples prepared by this process has higher whiteness and reduced yellowness. The treatment if flexible and desired fabric properties can be achieved by

treatment at both acidic and alkali pH thereby allowing this to be extended to blends with cotton.

The influence of the treatment on the mechanical properties show that fabric strength is increased. The dye pick is significantly improved for commonly used reactive dyes as well as direct dyes. The improvement in handle was evaluated by instrumental analysis as well as subjective measurements. The increase in softness is achieved in addition to whiteness, brightness, dye pick up and without reduction in strength which is not achieved by any other chemical processing of cotton.