A raising of the quality base and increasing levels of discounts impact significantly on the profitability of dryland cotton.

The 13th Australasian Plant Breeding Conference was held in Christchurch NZ, April 18-21. This

is the primary conference relating to plant breeding activities in Australia and New Zealand and

Sicot F-1 is a new cotton variety released in 2004. It has been developed specifically in response to the appearance of a new unique strain of the Fusarium wilt pathogen in Australia.

A project examining ways of improving the water use efficiency of cotton through breeding has now been completed. This paper summarises the results of four years research.

Even though the Australian cotton industry is based on a high input irrigated system, there is an increasingly significant area of dryland cotton.