The Winter 2022 edition of CRDC’s magazine Spotlight is out today, showcasing some major developments in cotton R&D.
Creating vaccines for plants against pests – both disease and insect – is a game-changer for agriculture. The development of BioClay for use against silverleaf whitefly at the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Translational Hub for Sustainable Crop Protection comes as great news for the cotton industry. The Hub is being led by University of Queensland in collaboration with 15 partners, including CRDC and fellow RDCs GRDC, Wine Australia and Hort Innovation.
CRDC is also part of a ground-breaking project to address spray drift. The much-anticipated collaboration with GRDC and Goanna Ag was announced in March, with the first in a network of towers being installed in April. This represents the single biggest investment in CRDC’s history and the most significant move to improve spray application via R&D.
R&D has also come to the fore with recent yields in central Queensland. News of yields above 23 bales per hectare is extraordinary and speaks to the ability of the industry – our researchers and growers – to adapt to climatic conditions to grow cotton. CRDC has long supported QLD DAF research in central Queensland to improve outcomes for growers, and the results have gone above and beyond our expectations. The story behind these yields is great reading in this edition.
Read these great stories, and much more, in .
