On Target With Irrigated Ag

2023-24 NSW Southern Valleys Cotton Season

This podcast presents an insight from Kieran O'Keeffe (Regional Extension Officer Southern NSW CottonInfo and IREC Executive) on the 2023-24 NSW Southern Valleys Cotton Season. The 2023-24 season will be remembered as a very rewarding season with district yields averaging a record 12.2 b/ha with around 1 million bales produced in southern NSW.

Rice Season - 2024

This podcast presents an insight from SunRice's Manager Grower Services and Extension Mark Groat on the 2024 rice harvest in the southern region. The majority of the crop is the bold medium grain type called V071, which has averaged 13T / ha across the whole MIA – an outstanding effort by growers. Listen in to hear more on the yield and quality this year along with more information about Rice Extension's focus sites.

Optimising Water Management in Young Almond Orchards with Heavy Soils

This podcast presents insights adopted from an article published in the Irrigation Research Extension Committee’s Farmers’ Newsletter, 210, Spring 2023, titled: Optimising Water Management in Young Almond Orchards with Heavy Soils, by Carlos Ballester, Rodrigo Filev-Maia and John Hornbuckle (Deakin University). Given water is a critical resource for food production in Australia — and the Riverina in particular — practices for increasing drought resilience are of great importance. This is why deficit irrigation strategies have been designed for many crops to maximise productivity with reduced irrigation water. In almonds, these strategies have been mostly designed for loamy soils, often based on a percentage reduction of the potential water use of plants. So, how do you optimise water management in young almond orchards with heavy soil typical of the Riverina? To answer the question, a summer deficit irrigation strategy to grow almond trees with less water was tested in three-year-old trees of Shasta and Nonpareil varieties. Listen in to hear more about the trial.

Growth Regulator Performance

This podcast presents insights adopted from an article published in the Irrigation Research Extension Committee’s Farmers’ Newsletter, 209, Autumn 2023, titled: Growth Regulator Performance Dampened in Season 2022 by Sam O’Rafferty and Hayden Petty from Summit Ag Agricultural Consulting. In 2022, two trials were conducted to investigate canopy and lodging management in irrigated barley at Whitton and irrigated durum wheat at Darlington Point as part of the Optimising Irrigated Grains project, funded by the Grain Research and Development Corporation. Focus paddocks provided an opportunity to run these trials to investigate crop production issues raised by local growers. The trials looked at the influence of fertiliser, variety and plant growth regulators, or PGRs, on cereal crops and the influence these had on yield and standability.

Glyphosate-Resistant Weeds

This podcast is an adapted summary of an article published in the Irrigation Research Extension Committee’s Farmers’ Newsletter, 209, Autumn 2023 Glyphosate-resistant weeds on the move in the Riverina by Christopher Preston from the School of Agriculture at the University of Adelaide and Christina Ratcliff from CSIRO’s Agriculture and Food unit. This episode is part of the Area Wide Management of Weeds Project. Glyphosate is used by many land managers to control weeds. When land managers rely on glyphosate for control of these weeds, the movement of glyphosate-resistant weeds between locations can create problems …