Satellites, airborne imaging systems and hand held instruments are frequently proposed as indicators of crop stress caused by water, soil compaction, lack of nutrients, diseases and mites.

The ongoing development and adoption of decision support tools within the Australian cotton industry has led to the need for refinement of several crop data collection techniques.

Fusarium wilt continues to be an increasing problem in almost all major cotton growing regions of Australia.

As with all post mortems the aim is to work out what happened and why.

Northern Australia, that is Australia north of 200s, is two regions with respect to crop production: (1) the Queensland coast (except Cape York) and adjacent hinterland, (2) the remainder. (1).