Queensland’s $1 billion cotton industry is set for a major boost, with a new multi-million-dollar partnership set to supercharge cotton innovation, increase grower support and help drive sustainable growth.
The initiative – Future Cotton: Innovation and Impact for Sustainability, Biosecurity and Growth – is a four-year strategic partnership between CRDC and Qld DPI.
Future Cotton aims to grow on-farm cotton productivity through targeted research, development and extension (RD&E), and will work to address the cotton industry’s most pressing challenges – from pest and disease management to emissions reduction, ag tech adoption and climate resilience.
Importantly, the project increases research and extension capacity across key cotton regions of Goondiwindi, Emerald and Toowoomba, with a team focused on delivering outcomes for the entire industry. This team will work closely with CottonInfo to support the adoption of innovation and deliver practical guidance to growers.
Ensuring future prosperity
Qld Minister for Primary Industries, the Hon. Tony Perrett MP said the partnership reflected the Government’s commitment to working alongside Queensland’s cotton industry to ensure its future prosperity.
“Cotton is one of Queensland’s most valuable and innovative agricultural industries, employing thousands of Queenslanders and producing 40 per cent of Australia’s cotton,” Minister Perrett said.
“With a gross value production (GVP) of over $1 billion, we know the cotton industry will be a key player in the government’s goal to achieve a farm gate output of $30 billion by 2030.
“The Future Cotton partnership is about investing in industry-led programs to increase sustainability and support our growers to get the best outcome for their crops every year."
Delivering practical on-farm outcomes
CRDC Executive Director Allan Williams said the partnership was about “turning research into results” and would deliver practical on-farm outcomes while strengthening the cotton industry’s capacity to lead positive change.
“This partnership with Qld DPI enables us to deliver focused, regional support to growers through expert technical leads, strategic research capability, and better extension,” Allan said.
“We’re tackling key issues like insecticide resistance, sustainable pest management, and adapting agronomic practice to improve climate resilience in a way that’s fully integrated across the whole cotton system.”
The Future Cotton partnership builds on decades of successful collaboration between CRDC and Qld DPI, which has delivered substantial yield increases in Central Queensland, driven the expansion of cotton across northern Australia, and improved on-farm pest management nationally. The program also supports CRDC’s Strategic Plan, Clever Cotton, grower-led initiatives focused on reducing emissions, and CRDC’s long-term goal of establishing a low-carbon cotton production system fit for a changing climate.
Lead scientist taking the reins
The collaboration is being led by highly respected industry research scientist, Qld DPI’s Dr Paul Grundy. Based in Toowoomba, he is also CottonInfo’s Technical Lead for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Northern Australia. Paul has been involved in a broad range of pest management and agronomic research projects for over 25 years including growing cotton in tropical climates, silverleaf whitefly management and tailoring cotton production in Central Queensland to get the best out of a sub-tropical climate.
CRDC Senior Innovation Broker Susan Maas, who is based in Emerald, brought the Future Cotton collaboration proposal together. She also has an in-depth understanding of the cotton farming system and the people who grow it.
Susan has been involved in the industry and CRDC for well over a decade, and her knowledge of past CRDC-supported research was drawn on to build the new project – incorporating many research and capacity angles and increasing RD&E resourcing to better serve growers in key regions.
Through Susan’s cross-disciplinary approach, Future Cotton will also collaborate with CRDC-supported initiatives such as the Australian Cotton Disease Collaboration (ACDC), the Cotton Low Emissions Intensity Farming Systems (Cotton LEIFS) project, and research focused on machine learning and sensing with the University of Southern Queensland’s (UniSQ’s) Centre for Agricultural Engineering. This approach will bring efficiency to the research.
Key activities of Future Cotton
- CottonInfo Technical Leads for IPM, Northern Australia, disease, biosecurity, and digital agriculture/agtech.
- Entomological research concentrating on silverleaf whitefly resistance testing, pesticide impacts on natural enemies, and soil pest control, which will inform the TIMS Insecticide Resistance Management Strategy (IRMS) processes, support IPM decision-making, and address emerging issues related to regulatory cancellation of some pesticides.
- Development of innovative agronomic systems to improve cotton production and resilience by exploring alternative production techniques and refining canopy management strategies.
- Grower-led initiatives to select, demonstrate and validate agronomic and farming system tactics to reduce greenhouse gas emission intensity compared with standard practices across different environments.
- Integration with CRDC’s ACDC program for better disease management.
- Creation of best practice information resources for the industry, including podcasts, video content and annual updates to CottonInfo publications.
- Enhanced RD&E capacity, with co-investment in additional personnel across Qld to respond to emerging crop protection, biosecurity and farming system challenges.
Capacity at its core: early career researchers on board
Future Cotton has increasing RD&E capacity in the regions as a key driver, and while this project has just been announced, the recruitment and onboarding of new team members has already begun, including recruiting and stationing research scientists and technical support staff in Goondiwindi, Emerald and Toowoomba.
This provides a direct link between researchers and growers in those regions. They’ll also be involved in experiments and trial sites in the regions in collaboration with other major CRDC investments, which will include on-farm carbon research for Cotton LEIFS and collaborate with pathologists working within the ACDC initiative.
Scientists and technicians will be working with growers who would like to explore and test farming system tactics to potentially reduce emission intensity compared with regular practice. For example, improving nitrogen use efficiency through testing the use of enhanced efficiency fertilisers, more tactical in-crop application of nitrogen or farming system adjustments to make greater use of legume cover or rotation crops.
Qld DPI staff are also involved in the project, including entomology researchers Dr Jamie Hopkinson and Jacob Balzer, CottonInfo Biosecurity and Disease Technical Lead Sharna Holman, Senior Development Extension Officer Tonia Grundy and Emerald-based technician Gail Spargo. Qld DPI Biometrician Kerry Bell also joins the team along with Assoc Professor Alison McCarthy (UniSQ) to further validate new technology for canopy management in cotton.
This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in the Spring 2025 edition of CRDC's Spotlight magazine. You can read this edition online here, and subscribe for future editions here.
