Tuesday 5 September
7:30 Registration desk open
8:00 Tea & coffee
8:30 Housekeeping
8:40 AACS Welcome
9:00-10:00 Session 1: Plenary sessions (CHAIR Dr Paul Grundy)
Oliver Knox: Soils – their health, myths and sustainable future
Merry Conaty: A digital strategy for the Australian cotton industry, what is it and why should researchers be excited?
10:00-10:30 Morning tea
10:30-12:30 Session 2: PEOPLE (CHAIR Susan Maas)
10:30 Don Jones: A private/public sector collaboration to address FOV
10:45 Kieran O’Keeffe: Southern NSW Grower groups — the key to adoption of best practice.
10:50 Nicole McDonald: Utilising Research to Address the National Agricultural Workforce Strategy for the Australian Cotton Industry
11:05 Nikki Kelly: Exploring a cotton and grains agricultural apprenticeship model
11:15 Melissa Sullivan: How to attract and retain young people to the cotton industry
11:25 Derek Long: Putting cotton in the spotlight in agricultural education
11:40 Melinda Mylek: Are we sustaining wellbeing in the cotton industry and cotton communities?
11:55 Renée Anderson: Building sustainable practices – The connection between wellbeing and agriculture
12:10 Simon Blyth (plenary): The role of technology in supporting adoption of best practice – Maverick case study
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:20 Session 3: Concurrent sessions
Session 3a: PADDOCK (CHAIR: Dr Linda Smith)
1:30 Sally Taylor: Insect pest management and research in U.S. cotton
1:45 Jamie Hopkinson: Resistance to spirotetramat in silverleaf whitefly. What’s happening in cotton?
2:00 Amanda Padovan: The challenges and opportunities of molecular resistance monitoring: A case study in Helicoverpa armigera Bt resistance
2:15 Dinesh Kafle: Plant-parasitic nematodes, a threat to Australian cotton?
2:30 Greg Holt: Orienting and rotating round modules to reduce plastic contamination risk
2:45 René van der Sluijs: Effect of nitrogen application rates on cotton yield and fibre quality – results from recent trials in Australia
3:00 Joseph Foley: Demonstrating and integrating irrigation technology for cotton
3:05 Wendy Quayle: Characterising nitrogen-water interactions in cotton bankless channel surface irrigation systems
Session 3b: PLANET/PLANT (Church Theatre) (CHAIR: Dr Kristen Knight)
1:30 Michael Rose: Diagnosing agrochemical “drift” injury through leaf tissue analysis — what have we learnt?
1:45 Malem McLeod: The trends of water productivity and water sustainability indicators for Australian cotton from the benchmarking program
2:00 Murray Hall: Innovative fibres, their economic viability, sustainability, threats, and opportunities – with specific reference to cotton
2:15 Simone Heimoana: Closing the loop – developing circular pathways for cotton production systems by creating value options from cotton gin trash waste
2:30 Blake Palmer: Does foliar nutrition help cotton crops overcome waterlogging?
2:45 Paul Grundy: Why early season square retention rarely matters for high yielding Bollgard 3 In Australia
3:00 Larissa Holland: Improving understanding of growth and development of cotton varieties
3:15 Xiaoqing Li: Gene editing in cotton, what is it good for?
3:20-3:45 Afternoon tea
3:45-5:00 Session 4: PLANT (CHAIR Dr Zitong Li)
3:45 Melanie Soliveres: A study of cotton bunchy top, will it go viral?
3:50 Lucy Egan: Untangling the Gordian knot of breeding for resistance to Verticillium wilt
4:05 Iain Wilson: Molecular biology to the rescue (again!): How genomics aids managing disease resistance in cotton
4:10 Hannah Hartnett: Influence of seed characteristics and physiological quality on establishment vigour
4:25 Qian-Hao Zhu: Pollen based cotton transformation, is it possible?
4:40 Philippe Moncuquet: The cotton genome puzzle: The value of connecting the pieces
5:00-6:30 Welcome drinks
Wednesday 6 September
7:45 Tea & coffee (Registration desk open)
8:25 Housekeeping
8:30-10:00 Session 5: PLANT (CHAIR Dr Joseph Foley)
8:30 Warwick Stiller (plenary): From the Holocene epoch to the era of AI
9:00 Peng Chee: QTL validation and identification of candidate genes in qFL-Chr.25, a G. barbadense-sourced QTL conditioning for increased fiber lengths in four diverse G. hirsutum backgrounds
9:15 Pierce Rafter: Exploiting GxE interactions to advance rainfed cotton yield
9:30 Annelie Marquardt: New approaches to improving water productivity in cotton
9:45 Demi Sargent: Unravelling the components of mesophyll conductance in Gossypium species to improve tolerance to heat and drought stress
10:00-10:30 Morning tea
10:30-12:30 Session 6: TECH (CHAIR Dr Warren Conaty)
10:30 Alison McCarthy (plenary): Artificial intelligence: what is it and what does it mean for cotton?
11:00 Greg Holt: AI classifier to enable an auto-calibration system for a gin-stand based machine-vision inspection system for plastic contamination
11:15 Moshiur Farazi: What can you see? Harnessing deep learning for cotton leaf hairiness phenotyping with HairNet2
11:30 Xuesong Li: New ways to measure old traits: a case study in cotton biomass dynamics
11:45 Manish Patel: Better than 20/20 vision: the role of AI in disease phenotyping
12:00 Zitong Li: Can A.I. select cotton lines suited for different environments?
12:15 Chris Teague: Predicting micronaire using variables from an industry agronomic database (ERICA)
12:25 Craig McDonald: Extensive Validation of the BARRY Model for the 2021 -22 Season
12:35-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:20 Session 7: NEXT GEN (CHAIR Dr Nicole McDonald)
1:30 Katie Broughton and Yui Osani (2019 Early Career Award recipients)
2:00 Chantal Corish: Understanding the role psychological safety can play in enhancing the learning and performance behaviours of leaders and employees on Australian cotton farms
2:05 Grace Fang: Over-expression of P450 CYP6CM1 associated with resistance to imidacloprid in Australian Bemisia tabaci MEAM1
2:20 Garima Dubey: Drought resilient cotton: Developing a new biochemical understanding of developing drought resistant cotton.
2:25 Sharna Holman: Understanding Spodoptera litura larval survival in Bollgard 3 crops in Northern Australia
2:40 Harry Paine: Benefits of a sprayable mulch in dryland cotton systems
2:45 Jonathon Moore: Palaeochannel spaghetti: Within-field soil and cotton yield variability on southern NSW palaeochannel systems
3:00 Mikaela Tilse: An approach to map cotton fibre quality on commercial farms using remote sensing and geostatistics
3:05 Arun Chandra Manivannan: Sustainable saccharification: Gin waste to fermentable sugars by microbial enzymes
3:20-3:45 Afternoon tea
3:45-4:30 Session 8: COMMS discussion panel
Meg Woodward: Communicating good science: panel discussion
6:00-10:30 Drinks at 6:00 for Conference Dinner seating at 6:30.
Dinner includes AACS award and life member announcements.
Thursday 7 September
7:45 Tea & coffee (Registration desk open)
8:25 Housekeeping
8:30 AACS AGM
9:15-10:15 Session 9: PLANT (CHAIR Dr Guna Nachimuthu)
9:15 Jon Baird: Assimilated N – the importance of internal nitrogen to developing fruit in cotton plants
9:30 Robert Sharwood: Opportunities for improving cotton production under future climates – the new role of synthetic biology.
9:45 Michael Bange: Boll periods in modern cotton systems
10:00 Katie Broughton: Can we alter crop development using novel plant growth regulators?
10:15-10:45 Morning tea
10:45-12:25 Session 10: PADDOCK (CHAIR Dr Alison McCarthy)
10:45 Graham Charles (plenary): The weed control fix
11:15 Jeff Werth: Utilising the double knock to increase efficacy of weed control on major weeds in Xtendflex cotton systems
11:20 Eric Koetz: A baseline assessment and survey of weeds and weed management systems in northern cotton regions
11:35 Guna Nachimuthu: Legacy effects of soil compaction on cotton and wheat crops in Vertosols: Insights from a field experiment
11:40 Gupta Vadakattu: Starving soil microbes: consequences to cotton plant and soil health
11:55 Patrick Filippi: Mapping cotton fields, predicting yield, and identifying yield limitations using scalable approaches for the Australian cotton industry
12:10 Tim Weaver: Future Farm: Using a shiny App and Google Earth to access Satellite data to make better N decisions.
12:25-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:05 Session 11: PADDOCK (CHAIR Dr Lucy Egan)
1:30 Kaitlyn Bissonnette: Challenges facing U.S. cotton production: a focus on pathogens and nematodes
2:00 Murray Sharman: Development and application of rapid molecular assays for cotton pathology
2:05 Emma Chorley: Cotton Disease Action Research Initiative – What have we achieved and learnt in the first year?
2:20 Donald Gardiner: Fluorescently tagged Verticillium dahliae to understand the infection process on cotton and other plants
2:25 Karthikeyan Muthusamy/ Sambasivam Periyannan: How are diseases in cotton managed in India, the leading producer?
2:40 Linda Scheikowski: An overview of Verticillium host range
2:45 Duy Le: Alternaria alternata causes distinct foliar symptoms on cotton in New South Wales
3:00 Linda Smith: Reoccurring wilt: The Eutypella story
3:05 Closing statements
3:30-4:30 Afternoon tea