David has a long history of contribution to cotton science. He was a member of the core team that delivered SIRATAC to the cotton industry and served as its general manager for a period. His efforts supporting SIRATAC were influential in raising the industry’s awareness of IPM and IPM approaches.

David also worked for many years supporting the efforts to improved soil management, especially issues such as compaction. Together with Ian Daniels he was instrumental in influencing growers and consultants to use soil pits to help diagnose soil structural issues as a basis for developing improved management.

 Over the last 20 years it’s his role supporting the three Cotton CRCs and the industry’s extension network in its various guises that has been most significant. David has  been a pioneer in developing approaches to convey information to industry. He has been an early adopter of any new technologies that he saw value in. For instance, he was amongst the first o develop desktop publishing as a means to assist countless researchers to rapidly and effectively package a wide array of information for industry in an easily readable format. We now take this for granted. He also injected a lot of his own ideas and ‘reality’ checks into these documents that substantially improved them. He was also instrumental in developing and populating the CRC’s and ultimately the industry’s websites, and also developed key content. This led to a website that provided industry with easy access to a broad range of information and resources to improve cotton production. Though not a scientist in the strict sense, David’s contribution to delivering Australian Cotton Science to industry has been of immense value to the industry, to researchers and to the broader extension effort.