Section 2 - Sugar Research and Development Corporation

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Section 3
HIGHLIGHTS OF RESEARCH PORTFOLIO
The SRDC investment portfolio produced some very strong outcomes
in 2010–2011 with research results being diverse and positive.
Industry Overview –
Southern Region
This year was an exciting time for R&D projects
in the south as several projects generated from
the southern region with industry-wide impact
were completed.
The most signifi cant was ‘Accelerating the
adoption of best practice nutrient management
in the Australian Sugar Industry’, which
developed and validated the SIX EASY STEPS
nutrient management package.
The project provided an opportunity to promote
and accelerate the adoption of best-practice
nutrient management across the Australian
sugarcane industry—of paramount importance
since the introduction of the Queensland
Government’s reef protection regulations.
Another project offering industry-wide benefi t
was ‘Establishing the second crop cycle into
permanent beds’ that assisted growers to
establish the second cane-cropping cycle
onto permanent beds with appropriate bed
maintenance and retention of undisturbed crop
residues to maintain soil structure and biology.
The project assessed a variety of tillage practices
to establish a second crop cycle and showed
that all treatments produced good yields in
the right conditions and demonstrated that
minimum tillage systems could offer signifi cant
cost savings.
Nutgrass is a particular weed problem in the
cane growing areas of northern NSW causing
poor germination and reduced growth of young
plants and ratoon crops. Previous attempts
to control outbreaks were ad hoc with no
satisfactory structured control package available.
Research project ‘Integrated nutgrass control
in NSW’ showed a substantial economic benefi t
for growers by who control nutgrass in cane
by adopting a long-term integrated approach
to reduce the number of viable tubers.
A publication, ‘Managing Nutgrass in Cane’,
was produced for growers.
SRDC Annual Report 2010–2011
Research and development is synonymous with
unpredictability. Some projects, while unable to
produce the desired output this year did, however,
advance the information base for future research.
‘Better frost tolerant varieties for NSW’ led by
the NSW Farming Systems Group is a good
example. Frost damage to sugarcane crops affects
about one third of the NSW cane growing lands
reducing production and costing the industry up
to $2.5 million in about one in three years. This
research tested whether artifi cial freeze testing of
cane seedlings could identify varieties that would
perform well under fi eld frosting conditions.
The trials showed that it is diffi cult to clearly
correlate ratings derived by artifi cial freeze testing
of seedlings with known fi eld reaction of more
mature cane plants. The degree of differentiation
between the good, average and poor categories
was very small and the majority of individual trials
failed to show any statistical signifi cance. Further
work may be able to refi ne the techniques, but
at this stage it’s not reliable enough to use in
recommendations to farmers on frost tolerance.
A project with particular application to the south
this year was ‘Restoring Effi ciency to Harvested
Cane Transport in New South Wales’. At the
beginning of the 2007 harvesting season no
operator in NSW could consistently load 23.5
tonnes of whole of crop material into the new
bins. This necessitated more trips to the mill,
which signifi cantly lowered transport effi ciency
and increased the cost of fuel to the cogeneration
plants. Researchers investigated ways to compact,
rather than compress, material into the bins and
increase bulk density during loading. The project
developed a pronged rake aligner and achieved
an impressive load of 23.26 tonnes net. However
evaluation found the system was labour intensive
and slow for a commercial harvesting operation
on a medium to high daily quota.
Next year, projects assessing variety performance
on different row spacing, the use of near infrared
(NIR) to rate variety resistance to smut and
Fiji Leaf Gall diseases, and a streamlined life cycle
assessment tool will be completed.