The objective of the mission was to promote Australian cotton as being ‘clean and green’ following the BMP and EMS marketing initiatives amongst Indonesian traders and spinners. The importance of this is reflected in Indonesia’s large cotton spinning capacity and the fact that it has several of the largest spinning mills in the world. Indonesia is also the largest customer of Australian cotton consuming around 36% of the 2004/05 crop [ACSA website 2005].

A highlight from a CTFT perspective was being able to meet spinners and merchants and listen to their observations with respect to processing Australian cotton.

WEEDpak, the Integrated Weed Management Guide for the Australian cotton industry was launched in 2002 in response to a rapidly changing weed management climate in the industry with the introduction of transgenic, Roundup Ready Cotton, and as a vehicle to facilitate the delivery of integrated weed management information to the cotton industry.

The WEEDpak internet site has been one of the most heavily used of the Cotton CRC web sites. WEEDpak is also available in hardcopy and via the COTTONpaks CD. It has been an important pivot point for encouraging the Australian cotton industry to continue to embrace an integrated approach to weed management.

The biggest threat to WEEDpak is that it becomes ‘old’ and out-of-date. Regular updates are important not only for providing new information, but also for encouraging growers to continually re-visit the information already available in WEEDpak.

Outcomes: The primary focus of this project has been the support and promotion of WEEDpak through focussed research and extension with the support of the Cotton TRC. The project has been highly successful in achieving these aims, greatly increasing the value of WEEDpak to the cotton industry, and maintaining this document as a regularly used resource.

Research focussed on monitoring weed problems in commercial cotton fields, developing management packages for problem weeds and developing herbicide damage information to assist cotton growers. The outcomes of this research have been delivered to the cotton industry primarily through WEEDpak, with promotion through a range of other mechanisms.

WEEDpak has been expanded in four areas.

1. Through additions and upgrades to the weed identification module, with the addition of 53 new weed sets and 73 weed information pages, as well as new indexes and upgrades to all the original material.

2. Through revision and expansion of the problem weed management module, with the addition of management guides for bellvine, mint weed, lippia and caustic weed, as well as updating the cowvine management guide.

3. Through revision and expansion of the rotation crop module, with the addition of management guides for lucerne strips and vetch crops, as well as updating the pigeon pea management guide.

4. With the inclusion of a totally new module, the Herbicide Damage Guide. This guide contains 24 sets of detailed herbicide damage information for drift rates of glyphosate, 2,4-D amine and a glyphosate/2,4-D amine combination. This information details the impact of known rates of herbicide on cotton exposed at different growth stages. Such information as the impact on node production, inter-node length, leaf number, leaf area, squaring and boll production and retention throughout the season are given.

A second section, the herbicide damage images, shows examples of how the symptoms of damage develop over time.

This new material is available in hardcopy, via the internet and on the COTTONpaks CD. The emphasis on the internet and CD methods of presentation has ensured that the latest version of WEEDpak is freely available to all.

The recent inclusion of the Herbicide Damage Guide is a major step forward for WEEDpak, adding a totally new area to the coverage of this document. Expansion of this information over the new few years will not only provide valuable information regarding herbicide damage, but will also ensure that WEEDpak continues to be a most valuable and regularly accessed document.

The CRDC project funds for “Operational Costs for Cotton Experiments” are used to fund cotton experimental trials at the Australian Cotton Research Institute (ACRI). The management of cotton growing for experimental trial cotton is dependent on the aims of the specific trial. However cotton growing at ACRI is undertaken to industry standards with the intention of maintaining the long-term productive capacity of the land. Last season 55Ha of cotton was grown at ACRI on behalf of NSW Department of Primary Industries researchers. Growing cotton in trials is intended to meet the needs for cotton experimentation in agronomy, entomology, farming systems and pathology.

This project arose from the 'Fibre Plus' workshops at Narrabri coordinated by both the Cotton CRC and the CRDC. These meetings identified the need to establish a standardised facility in Australia (a) to process small batches of cotton through the textile pipeline to knitted and woven samples and then (b) to analyse final fabric quality. This facility would be a valuable tool for post-harvest cotton research and in particular be valuable to the CRDC funded project at The National Centre for

Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA) in Toowoomba.

In a previous project (CRC project CRC28C) in this area, work at CSlRO was undertaken to produce a computer system for analysing the quality of dyed fabrics. This project was not entirely successful due to problems with the computer software purchased from the USA. The work has however identified an opportunity for evaluating the quality of dyed yarn rather than fabric, and this became the subject of the present project. Further the CRC project resulted in a large data base of samples (yarns and dyed fabrics) together with subjective visual assessments of white specks in the dyed fabric samples. This data base and samples form a critical set for testing the validity of the new approach.

The approach of analysing dyed yarn rather than fabric is attractive on two counts. Firstly it eliminates the need to produce fabric and so is in principle a more efficient and quicker approach. Secondly the approach of automatically testing yarns will mean that a range of different cones from the one batch of yarn can be quickly tested and thus the approach should lead to a more accurate result than is possible from an analysis of small fabric samples.

The subject of this thesis "The effect of cereal stubble on Helicoverpa armigera(Hubner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) activity in early season cotton(Gossypium spp.)" is a direct result of consultation with the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC), Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNR&M) and

Australian cotton growers. These stakeholders sought a scientific explanation for the

observed reduction in the use of disruptive insecticides in cotton when it was sown into

cereal stubble. Lower pest activity had been observed when cotton was sown into wheat

(Triticum. spp) stubble compared to conventionalIy planted cotton. This is significant

because it provides a possible low~cost, environmentally friendly method of controlling

pests in early season cotton without the use of disruptive insecticides.

Cotton prices vary for all sorts of reasons including seasonal conditions in major producing countries, exchange rate changes, world economic conditions and of course government subsidies and market distortions. To progress trade reforms it is important to show how Government policies and subsidies adversely impact on world prices and prices in individual countries. What then needs to be achieved is an understanding of the influence of price reductions caused by Government induced market distortions on producers and cotton producing regions as well as consumers. No useful conclusions can be drawn if the focus is on the effects of low prices per se.

Low prices in the international marketplace for cotton will affect producers in a similar way to low prices in most sectors.

That is lower prices potentially cause lower returns to producers who will feed those returns through to any of reduced employment and production or reduced investment in infrastructure. This will lead further to changes in government and economy wide income and have effects on revenues, employment and output industries that are part of the sector's value chain. These price effects would not be unique to the cotton industry.The ICAC approach of gathering data is important in quantifying impacts on domestic economies. However, mand of itself, the information is not valuable in achieving anything to alleviate the effects. The working group information needs to be utilised to establish the 'cause' of the lower prices and, in particular, the extent to which world cottonprices are reduced because of government induced market distortions. This analysis can then be taken a step further to identify the implications of market distortions for producers incomes, and for the economies of cotton producing regions.

Trap cropping is an established technology within many IPM systems for a broad range of

crops. Successful trap crops act as diversionary hosts for key pests, attracting and

concentrating the pests and their eggs into a relatively small area where the population can be controlled. Typically trap crops are 'suicide' crops that are destroyed prior to harvest in order to kill pests trapped within them. Trap cropping programs aim to reduce egg densities on the primary crop(s) on an areawide basis, resulting in an overall reduction in management costs for individual farms.

Interest in establishing areawide trap cropping programs has grown within the Australian cotton industry, following the success of the Central Queensland trap cropping program initiated by Dr Richard Sequelra as part of the INGARD resistance management plan. Results suggested that substantial populations of Helicoverpa could be captured and destroyed by chickpea and pigeon pea trap crops.

This project set outto quantify the effectiveness of trap crops and measure the impact of trap crops on egg densities in surrounding cotton.

The Cotton Rivers and Climate Change project assesses the impacts of climate change on water resources in the Gwydir, Border and Condamine-Balonne River Systems of north-east NSW and southern Queensland. The project has been undertaken by Hassall & Associates, CSIRO Atmospheric Research, NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation (DLWC) and Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines (QNR&M). The project has been funded by the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, with in-kind contributions from DLWC and QNR&M.

Three climate scenarios have been generated for the year 2030: “base”, “average” and “dry” scenarios. The scenarios represent plausible outcomes rather than predictions. The scenarios provide changes to rainfall and potential evaporation (predominately through temperature increases), at a regional scale. This modified climatic data is then used to assess the effects of projected climate change scenarios on streamflow and modified crop demand. The process used 1993/94 systems of allocating water between different users, including the allocations to the environment and diversions for irrigation.

The cornmonly used Micronaire value for cotton is related to both fibre fineness and maturity. There is a need for a new measurement technique to separate these. This is of particular importance to the Australian industry where varieties of fine, mature cotton have the potential to be wrongfully discounted commercially by misinterpreting a low Micronaire value as indicating immaturity in a coarser fibre.

A preliminary CRDC funded project (CRDC Project CSWTIC), demonstrated that the Sirolan-Laserscan, in a novel mode of operation, is able to measure the fineness of cotton fibres independent of fibre maturity.

Following this, a paper on the preliminary results of the technique was presented to the USA

Beltwide meeting in January 1999 and also Dr Geoff Naylor visited and had in-depth

discussions with the other key researchers in this area at the USDA in New Orleans (CRDC

Project CSWT 2C). The main outcome was that there is general agreement that the new

Sirolan-Laserscan approach has significant potential as a viable technique for measuring

cotton fibre fineness. Further, it is thought that it might easily be possible to extend the

approach to yield fibre maturity information by combining the results from this approach with the current micronaire measurement.

FUSCOM has always been an excellent means to encourage collaboration between research groups within Australia and communicate research activities to various groups. But one of the greatest assets of this meeting is the discussions on where there are gaps in our knowledge and what research needs to be conducted to address these issues. For example, this year renifonn nematode was detected in cotton and was determined to be widespread in Theodore. The cotton industry has never faced this issue before. Verticillium wilt in recent years has become increasing1y more severe and the possibility that new strains are present was raised. Boll rots are increasing in incidence and severity in Central Queensland. New projects funded by CRDC are commencing to research these new issues, however to assist in tackling these problems, collaboration with international researchers who have experienced these issues, would benefit Australian research.

It may be difficult due to Government policy on international travel and expensive, for pathologists from Australia to travel overseas to meet with experts on reniform nematode, verticillium wilt, boll rots, viruses etc. However, it would be possible to invite four experts from overseas to attend an International FUSCOM workshop to address very specific pathology issues current in Australian cotton.

The workshop will be held over two and a half days with focussed presentations from international guests and Australian pathologists targeting current pathology issues and potential future issues. Four international pathologists will be invited to cover the breadth of current RD&E activity relating to cotton pathology (including nematodes). The workshop will follow a similar format to previous FUSCOM workshops, however with a more targeted approach. The workshop will also provide for informal interaction at the welcome reception and in the evenings.

The aim of this workshop is to create and facilitate opportunities for national and international RD&E exchange. There will also be opportunities for participants to liaise with international guests before and after the workshop.

A pre-workshop tour of cotton growing regions will also take place, to enable our international guests to visit growers to get a better understanding of our farming practices and problems which will be invaluable to assist our guests to better address management strategies that suit our cropping systems.