AG in Focus Victoria - Spring 2011
Our cover: Andrew Walta with EverGraze project leader Kate Sargeant
What is AG in Focus Victoria?
AG in Focus Victoria is a quarterly publication produced by Kondinin Group with support from the Department of Primary Industries. AG in Focus Victoria delivers the latest agricultural research and innovation from across the State. The information aims to help primary producers make better choices to increase productivity and profitability.
Articles:
- Keeping lamb meat red
- Perennials increasing productivity
- Harvesting into the future
- Bedding down for next season
- Trade off revealed in carbon, nitrogen study
- Profiting from pastures
- New research boosts citrus exports
- Take the next step with electronic ID
Productivity increases tied to scientific breakthroughs
Minister for Agriculture and Food Security, Peter Walsh
Welcome to the second edition of AG in Focus Victoria. Since the publication of the first magazine, progress has continued in driving innovation for the agricultural sector.
Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the new world-class centre for agri-bioscience in Victoria, the $288 million AgriBio facility, which is currently under construction and will be up and running early next year.
This state-of-the-art facility, which is currently undergoing its final fit-out before technical completion and will house up to 400 scientists and students from DPI and La Trobe University. It includes more than 70 controlled environment rooms capable of simulating real world conditions for plant and pest research.
It also features Australia’s largest physical containment suites that comply with level three criteria — the second highest biosecurity safety level.
A pressured ‘box within a box’ design will allow scientists to carry out industry-saving research safely.
The centre will lead the world in research on gene discovery in major plant and animal species, molecular breeding for drought tolerance and disease resistance and genetics related to plant and animal productivity and health.
I am confident that as one of Australia’s premier biosciences facilities, AgriBio will give our food and fibre producers a competitive edge in global markets.
It will help them harness the latest scientific and technological expertise to achieve new productivity gains on farm.
Already, as you will read in this edition, DPI has a strong base in bioscience research, with scientists investigating such issues as the future impact of the highly destructive barley yellow dwarf virus on wheat crops.
This edition of AG in Focus Victoria provides information on many more ways Victorian producers can increase productivity and profitability.
Take Joe Jacobs’ work in alternative pastures and forages to extend the grazing season for dairy farmers, saving money on supplementary feed, while meeting nutritional requirements.
Kate Sargeant’s EverGraze group is revealing the value of perennial pastures to livestock producers.
Turning to horticulture, Nick O’Halloran has been investigating the benefits of organic amendments such as chicken manure and compost and their respective impacts on soil nutrition and carbon levels.
Meanwhile, with a return to average rainfalls, Tim Johnston’s work on raised bed cropping could prove valuable to many, particularly those in the south west of Victoria, who may be facing waterlogging for the first time in a decade.
I hope you find AG in Focus Victoria an interesting and helpful read.
Peter Walsh
Minister for Agriculture and Food Security
News in Brief
Making nitrogen decisions in space
Satellites could one day be used to help farmers determine how much nitrogen to apply, thanks to ground breaking research by scientists from DPI Horsham.
Researchers have developed a system that uses satellites or airborne imagery to provide a precise analysis of crop nitrogen requirements.
The system could one day enable farmers to boost yields and lower costs by providing them with a far more accurate picture of where and how much nitrogen they need to apply.
It could replace the much slower in-paddock tissue testing, with a faster result using a remote sensing index to analyse a crops so-called ‘greenness’, which would help calculate nitrogen levels.
DPI researchers have been working on this project with partners from the University of Melbourne and Queensland University of Technology as well as Michigan State University in America and Italy’s University of Basilicata.
DPI senior research scientist Dr Glenn Fitzgerald said rain-fed wheat plots at Horsham and in southern Italy were studied, with their greenness and nitrogen status measured using the remote sensing index.
The results of their research were reported in April’s Journal of Crop and Pasture Science.
Online tool measures pasture consumption
 |
|
Bill Wales |
DPI researchers have officially backed a new way of estimating dry matter (DM) consumption in dairy herds.
They believe a technique called ‘feeding systems’ is more accurate than the current system.
DPI research scientist Janna Heard led the team of Victorian and West Australian scientists studying how farmers account for energy requirements of Australian herds.
As a result of this work, a simple computer program has been developed to help them estimate on-farm annual pasture removal and feed conversion efficiency of the milking herd.
DPI research manager of dairy production sciences Bill Wales said this could be used to benchmark farm performance over time.
“You need to measure pasture consumption accurately to make sensible decisions on purchasing expensive supplements,” he said.
“However, estimating the amount of pasture consumed is difficult and is infl uenced by the inter-relationship between animals, plants and overall feed management.”
Find out more about the pasture calculator »
Water holding data now more accurate
DPI scientists have found a way to more accurately predict soil water-holding capacity, which will provide improved crop yield predictions for Victoria’s cropping regions.
The new way to predict soil water-holding capacity could increase accuracy by 10–15 per cent, according to DPI soil physics researcher Abdur Rab.
The information can be used to predict soil water-holding capacity where only limited information about soil composition or soil type is available.
The findings, published in the July edition of Soil Research evaluated nationally available models for predicting soil water-holding capacity for Victorian cropping regions for the first time.
“Crop prediction tools use field capacity and permanent wilting point as the critical inputs,” Dr Rab explained.
The research team crunched the waterholding data and observed soil information to create a predictive model.
“The work will help to accurately quantify the uncertainties in yield prediction using existing tools such as Yield Prophet,” Dr Rab said.
The research was undertaken by DPI scientists working at Tatura, Epsom, Werribee and Ellinbank and is jointly funded by DPI and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.
Milking the most out of the Dairy Futures Cooperative Research Centre
The Dairy Futures CRC hit cyberspace in June, with a big focus on multimedia.
With a fresh, clean look and lots of interactive elements, dairyfuturescrc.com.au has been designed to take farmers on a journey of the CRC, so they can keep up-to-date with its progress.
Dairy Futures CRC chief executive David Nation said he wanted it to be “more than your run-of-the-mill website”.
“I wanted farmers to be able to look and listen and play with the website, rather than just read about the CRC,” Dr Nation said.
“We’re really happy with the website and think it’s going to be a key tool for explaining to the end users of the science — Australian dairy farmers — exactly what we are doing.
The website features vodcasts (video), podcasts (audio) and stories around Dairy Futures CRC’s projects, which aim to improve pastures and cattle, discussing everything from designer grasses to sexed semen.
It also talks about how to apply for Dairy Futures CRC’s graduate and post-graduate scholarships.
So, what exactly is a CRC and as far as the dairy industry is concerned what does it deliver?
A CRC — a cooperative research centre — is a research partnership driven by end-users.
Dr Nation said it is set up to address clearly articulated, major challenges that require medium to long-term collaboration efforts.
He said each CRC’s focus is to deliver significant economic, environmental and social benefits to Australia.
“The Dairy Futures CRC is a large-scale partnership between dairy farmers, pasture and cattle breeding companies, government and researchers,” he said.
“It continues a strong history of dairy industry and government investment in breakthrough technology and will work with a broad range of new biosciences to deliver real gains for dairy farmers.”
Investment ranges from new genetic technology through to activities that best position each innovation to capture value at farm, factory and community levels.
Improvements in pasture cultivars and breeding dairy cattle alone are expected to deliver $320 million in value for dairy farmers.
Dairy Futures CRC is an example of a truly integrated innovation project and is the single largest research program for the Australian dairy industry.
It includes a range of participants and project partners who represent end-user organisations, research organisations and commercial service providers.
Governance is provided by a board of directors made up of a non-executive chairman, five non-executive directors and the chief executive.
Go to www.dairyfuturescrc.com.au for more information.
