The summer edition of CRDC's magazine, Spotlight, shines a light on the triple threat of insects, diseases and weeds facing cotton growers, as a result of so much spring rain. This edition includes CRDC's latest pest research results, which highlight the need to practice sound Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It also takes a look at CRDC's latest investments into disease research, which have doubled in response to grower feedback, with a particular focus on verticillium. And it delves into the issue of herbicide resistance in weeds, investigating CRDC's investments into robotic and alternative methods of control.

Also in this issue, we introduce CRDC's new chair Richard Haire, our newest Nuffield scholar Daniel Kahl, and two of this year's Future Cotton Leaders, Emma Ayliffe and Dave Walton. We also take a look at how the industry's research priorities are set in the annual CRDC Strategic Forum, and provide a snapshot of CRDC's major achievements during 2015-16.

Rapid customisation is a way of creating physical products directly from digital design files through computer-controlled manufacturing. Perhaps the most widely known approach to rapid customisation currently is 3D printing, where machines can build up a physical object layer by layer from a digital model. The cost to the consumer of 3D printers has been steadily decreasing and consumer models are now small enough to fit easily on a desktop. Market trends suggest that in the future these machines may be as inexpensive, readily available and as reliable as desktop ink-jet printers are today.

This technology promises to have far reaching impacts on many sectors of industry and everyday life. It could mean for example, that consumers could print out objects themselves at home rather than having to purchase them from a store. It is also likely to allow new forms of manufacturing including novel combinations of materials, which have not been possible or economically feasible to achieve previously.

One of the key challenges for research into rapid customisation is to broaden the range of different kinds of materials that can be used as a source of feedstock. The aim of the project is to assess the technical and economic feasibility of using cotton-derived materials as a feedstock in rapid customisation processes where cotton has a particular advantage due to its inherent qualities, such as high cellulose content, biodegradability and natural fibre qualities. Our objectives are to:

1. Survey the range of available rapid customisation techniques and assess their suitability for cotton-derived feedstock

2. Investigate the ways that cotton could be processed to provide an input into a rapid customisation process and assess their feasibility

3. Provide design visions for potential end-user applications of cotton-based rapid customisation techniques with indicative market potential.

Robots will change the way we do things, including the way we farm.

Robotic enabled weed control is an evolutionary step in precision agriculture and the dawn of weeding robots is upon us. Over the past 10 to 15 years a lot of investment in robotics research, and the tools that may be fitted to them, have occurred world-wide but few have been commercialised into relevant, practical and therefore functional farm assets. Lack of development investment and subsequent commercialisation are the current barriers to adoption of this technology.

Simply, an agricultural weeding robot consists of hardware and software - a self-steered (unmanned) and propelled platform that hosts an array of weed detection units that in turn activate an array of weeding tools whether that be a spray nozzle, microwave unit or tillage tool as examples.

Within Australia, four agricultural unmanned ground vehicles (UGV or robotic platforms) have been built. Most are still in the prototype testing stage; these include the Ladybird, RIPPA (both from Field Robotics Research Centre, University of Sydney), and AgBotII (Queensland University of Technology). Only one – Swarmbot (SwarmFarm Robotics) has been commercially launched and that occurred in late March 2016.

Currently there are only three weed detection/sensing units commercially available in Australia and they include Weedseeker and WeedIT, and more recently the H-Sensor originating from Europe. H-Sensor is able to detect green from green while the other two units detect green from brown which means the former is ideal for in-crop use and the latter are best utilised in fallow.

In it evident in the literature that many weeding tools and non-herbicidal tactics (eg. steam) have been developed but few have been commercialised or are not readily accessible for robotic application. Currently, microwave technology and a targeted tillage implement for weed control are being developed in Australia; the latter for the grains industry to tackle herbicide resistant weeds, but it too is not being developed for robotic enablement.

A brief overview of current weed management practices and the main weed issues of Australian cotton production systems have been described. Herbicide resistance development and species-shifts due to over-reliance on glyphosate arising from the advent of glyphosate tolerant varieties; as well as the management of rogue (volunteer and ratoon) cotton are the major current foci of cotton weed management. Based on this, the areas where robotic enabled weed management might fit have been identified. It is not the intent that robots should undertake all on-farm weed management tasks, but rather the more tedious and time consuming tasks that require maximum efficacy results. The key opportunities include but are not limited to:

• Spot spraying of weeds and rogue cotton plants in-crop and in fallow – low density situations or escapes of broadcast weed management applications; or odd patches of hard-to-kill and or resistant weeds; using alternate modes of action products.

• As above but by spot tillage (or other non-chemical treatment).

• Application via spot or patch spraying of effective but expensive herbicides that might not otherwise be used due to their cost.

• Weed surveillance – monitoring and mapping weeds in the paddock; the grower knows exactly where his weeds and issues are; monitoring for herbicide resistance survivors; becomes the eyes!

Finally, two specific areas where the CRDC might consider further investment in the short to medium term are suggested.

Each year, Crop Consultants Australia - with support from CRDC - conduct a qualitative survey of cotton consultants regarding their practices and attitudes, as well as those of their cotton grower clients. The resulting report provides valuable information to the Australian cotton industry regarding on-farm practices , helping to benchmark the industry's performance in a range of key areas over time. This report, published in December 2016, looks at the 2015-16 cotton growing season.

CRDC engaged BDA Group to undertake a triple bottom line evaluation of two completed projects that were known to have had a significant industry impact. While this evaluation forms part of a broader examination of investment projects funded by Australian Rural Research and Development Corporations, it also provides an indication of the nature and extent of gains that the CRDC has been able to achieve on the funds that they manage. Although the CRDC’s primary investment focus is to enhance the international competitiveness of the Australian cotton industry, they have been able to deliver significant environmental and broader social gains to the Australian community.

This report presents the triple bottom line evaluation of CRDC’s investment in managing pest resistance in transgenic cotton and the development and commercialisation of the Irrimate technology. The report found that when compared to the total investment portfolio, the two hero projects examined in this study provide an indication of the minimum average return on funds invested across all projects and activities supported by the CRDC. It was estimated that the pay off from CRDC investment over four years of operation was considerable, both on levy payer funds and matching funds provided by the Federal government:

Levy Payers – an estimated return of $13 for every dollar invested.

Industry as a whole – an estimated return of $12 for every dollar invested.

Australia – an estimated return of $30 for every dollar of matching funds provided.

Leaf traits of five riparian tree species common to cotton farms of the Northern Murray-Darling Basin were investigated to determine inter- and intraspecific variation. It was hypothesised that high intraspecific variation would be associated with broader distributions of tree species, and hence greater resilience to environmental change, while species with low intraspecific variation might be considered more vulnerable to hydrological and/or climate change.

Black root rot, caused by the pathogen Theilaviopsis basicola is an important disease in Australian cotton. Each season NSW DPI conducts surveys in commercial cotton crops to document the incidence and severity of cotton diseases. Currently there are 60 T. Basicola isolates in the long term culture collection as a result of isolating the pathogen from plants suffering symptoms. Black root rot does not generally kill plants but causes slow growing, stunted plants. The consequences of this is an uneven crop, maturity is harder to manage and pushes the crop back. This delay means the crop is slower to develop and increases the risk of a late maturing crop. This in turn has the potential to push the crop into cooler weather near the end of maturity, increasing the risk of Verticillium wilt disease.

The incidence and severity of black root rot has increased over the last decade, especially in the Namoi valley. The question is why? In order to answer this question we need to gain a better understanding of the pathogens morphology, growth rates and pathogenicity among isolates collected from different geographical regions within the production areas of NSW.

In recent years, the high level of activity required on-farm for cotton growers has resulted in a lack of time to network, both within the Dawson Valley and with growers and contacts outside the Valley. This networking provides a valuable opportunity for growers to not only socialise but also to learn from each other and view potentially new and innovative farming practices.

The Sticky Beak Tour was developed to address this omission and provide growers with the opportunity to view neighbouring cotton farms and potentially improve their own practices through information sharing. It is also an opportunity to re-invigorate their interest in the industry after some rather challenging seasons.

The cotton plant derived a large proportion of N nutrition from the soil organic pool (up to 70%) which is composed of N sourced from previous fertiliser application and the soil N pool that has built up over the millennia. The soil base is developing an equilibrium with the current land use. Over the last century for Australian agriculture has benefited from some soil chemical and physical properties inherited from the pre European condition. The size of the soil organic N pool is declining with the decline in soil organic carbon stocks, which means that in the future a greater rates on N fertiliser will need to be used to maintain agricultural yields. During the season 143 kg N ha-1 was lost, via atmospheric losses, run-off and deep drainage; and by far the largest losses were N2 from the soil surface. Nitrogen present in the run-off water equated ~8% of the applied fertiliser and this could be transformed into indirect N2O-N. The IPCC estimates of flux overestimate indirect emissions by a factor of at least 3.7. Applications of IPCC methodology to estimate indirect N2O emissions are unlikely to be accurate. A better understanding of the processes controlling N2O production, and attempts to reconcile top-down and bottom-up estimates are necessary if we are to develop better estimate and mitigate indirect N2O emissions.

Water is the most limiting input in irrigated cotton production. Compaction reduces access to the soil water resource and reduces soil health. Incorporating Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) in 1.5 m row irrigated cotton improves water use efficiency (WUE). This investigation compared 1.0 m and 1.5 m row-spacing on cotton yield, fibre quality and WUE. The 1.5 m row-spacing cotton was hypothesised to have a similar gross margin and fibre characteristics but greater WUE and yield per plant through access to a larger soil water resource. This replicated study was conducted over two years (2013-14 and 2014-15) and had an RCB design with a field scale whole block experiment which contained nine replicates of 1.0 m and 1.5 m row treatments. The field scale whole block contained two large field blocks of 1.0 m and 1.5 m treatments. The 1.5 m cotton had a greater WUE by producing 0.09 more bales per ML. This reduced the irrigation requirement in the 1.5 m resulting in a higher gross margin than 1.0 m cotton ($2658/ha and $2466/ha, respectively). The 1m cotton out yielded the 1.5 m in both seasons by 1.8 bales/ha (16%) and 1.09 bales/ha (6%) respectively. Yield differences in the 1.0 m cotton were only achieved through an increase in inputs. Fibre quality was slightly better in 1.5 m cotton. The 1.5 m row-spacing, based on its capacity to improve WUE, is more suitable for water limited environments. Furthermore, CTF provides greater water use efficiency by minimising soil compaction.