Disease surveys in November and March of each season have been undertaken on a regular basis since 1983.

This report arises from a scoping brief presented to the author on 19th May 1995.

Frontiers of Population Ecology Meeting program and abstracts

In March 1995 I attended two Keystone Symposia, "Frontiers of Plant Morphogenesis" and "Signal Transduction in Plants", held concurrently at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, U.S.A.

The cotton plant has two main sets of traits that contribute to its resistance to pests: (1) chemical (e.g. gossypol) and morphological defences (e.g. okra-leaf) and (2) compensatory mechanisms for regrowth (e.g.

Cotton fibres are differentiated from single ovule epidermal cells and grow synchronously, initiating at about the time of anthesis.

Annual Report 1994-1995

This report summarises the findings from the CRDC funded project "Managing soils to avoid compaction problems in cotton growing". The project ran from 1989/90 to 1991192.

Project Objectives: Part A: (i) To study the effect of wet/dry cycles with drying by evaporation alone in ameliorating degraded furrows in retained hill cotton (at the Fressor site).

A growth disorder of cotton ( Gossypium hirsutum) occurs in irrigated cracking clay soils in cotton growing regions of northern New South Wales.

Vertosols are the main soil type on which cotton is grown in Australia. Eighty percent of irrigated cotton is grown in retained hill.

OBJECTIVES: 1. To study sampling and control practices for mirlds in irrigated and dryland cotton.

The conference was held on the 23 - 27th of August, 1994 in Silsoe, UK.

In 1994, the Australian cotton farmer must use a wide range of costly chemicals to harvest a profitable crop. These chemicals vary significantly in their degree of hazard. Some chemicals (e.g.

Raingrown cotton is becoming a very important component of the Australian industry: the relative proportion of the crop grown with rain has been increasing over the past ten years.

The irrigated cotton industry in Australia has been developed around major river systems to allow water to be pumped to farm storages and then recirculated on farm using flood irrigation techniques.

Program

In recent years Cotton Seed Distributors (CSD) have made available a range of CSIRO varieties with different attributes, thus enabling farmers to choose varieties best suited to their particular situation.

In 1992 we started work on an alternative way of detecting pesticide residues, based on the application of medical immunodiagnostic tests.

Integrated pest management (IPM), or integrated pest control as it was originally known, is not a new concept.