The CRDC Grassroots Grants program encourages Cotton Grower Associations (CGAs) to apply for funding to support capacity building projects in their region.

Since the Grassroots Grants program commenced in 2011, CRDC has invested over $466,000 in 52 projects across the cotton growing valleys – from weather stations to crop nutrition workshops.Up to $10,000 in funding is available for CGAs to help fund a project aimed at increasing the engagement of growers in the industry, solving specific regional issues and improving their skills, knowledge base and networks.

Given the incidence of non-target spray drift having a very significant impact across the cotton industry and particularly in the Macquaire Valley over the last two seasons the Macquaire Cotton Growers Association (MCGA) thought action needed to be taken to try and reduce the incidence across the valley.

Discovery Ag had recently installed an extensive weather station network (every 25km across our region). The MCGA wanted to use grass roots funding to install or access weather stations that could be fitted with 10m inversion towers. We discussed the potential for accessing an existing network that could be fitted with the towers as this would be more economical.

The MCGA approached Discovery Ag and Goanna Telemetry and they were happy to collaborate on this project with the shared aim of reducing the incidence of off target spray drift in the valley. Goanna Telemetry has an existing network of weather station with a web and app-based viewing platform that we were able to access as part of the project.

How the weather stations work

Surface temperature inversions are formed when a layer of cool air at the surface is overlain by a layer of warmer air. (Under normal conditions air temperature usually decreases with height.) The weather stations monitor the Air temperature at 2m and 10m.The network can flag in our app when an Inversion risk occurs.

(Inversion risk = When 10m Air Temperature is 0.1deg C greater than the Air Temperature at 2m).

The weather stations then report any inversion risk that occurred between the 10min period reporting interval.

During the ten minutes the weather station is not reporting it measures and median filters air temperature every 12 seconds. The network will identify good spraying conditions and alert when inversion conditions exist.