Weed meeting

Weed meeting, 19-20 October 1998
Convenors: Dr Jim Fortune & Professor Steve Powles

Back row: Steve Powles, Bob Blackshaw, Alison Pitman, Steve Sutherland, Peter Howden, Jay Cummins, Bill Bowden, Art Diggle, Brian Trenbath, Tom Nordblom
Centre row: Roger Wiese, Toni Nugent, Randall Jones, Vanessa Stewart, Sally Marsh, Dick Medd
Front row: Risk Llewellyn, Deirdre Lemerle, Marta Giesbertz, David Pannell, Jim Fortune
Not shown: Amir Abadi (he’s behind the camera); Ross Britton, Jens Berger

Introduction

Both the CRC and the WAHRI commenced operation with the bold and stated goal of reducing the cost and impact of weeds. While the wording had some differences, the intention leaves us with several shared requirements if we are to achieve the goal. These relate to:

delivering outcomes;
quantifying the value of the outcome;
determining if there are ways by which we can optimise the speed of delivery.

Herbicide resistance in weeds and its mirror, herbicide resistance in crops, provides us with a very useful, and shared focus, for our respective programs. Resistance is:

an expanding issue;
a threatening issue;
an issue that impacts on the entire farming system;
an issue that costs money and will undoubtedly cost more.

For all these reasons, any technology transfer package will have to integrate social, economic and production attributes. This integration will have to be in a form that is accessible to the 40,000 farmers who produce much of the nation’s grain.

Workshop Opjectives

To share current status of activities and knowledge focussing on improving the adoption of technology in cropping systems.
To use the breadth of knowledge in the workshop to answer a series of questions that are pertinent to the current dynamics of issues relating to herbicide resistance.
The group will provide (for the CRC and WAHRI) a discussion paper that provides pathways for the design and delivery of integrated weed management packages or strategies.

Program

Day 1

Time	Who		Working topic	Chairs
9-9.20	Jim Fortune	CRC Weed Management Systems Adelaide	Intro & what we want	Steve Powles
9.20 - 9.40	Peter Howden	CSU Wagga Wagga (Pgrad)	Farming styles in broadacre cropping
9.40 - 10	Jay Cummins	Uni of Adelaide Roseworthy (Pgrad)	The Cropping 2000 Survey & information networks
10.30-11.00	Amir Abadi	UWA Western Weeds Initiative	The importance of risk in adoption	Bill Bowden
11.00- 11.30	Sally Marsh	UWA/CLIMA	What can agricultural researchers do to encourage the adoption of sustainable farming systems?
11.30 - 12.00	David Pannell	UWA and places further south	RIM - Ryegrass Integrated Management decision support tool
12.00-12.30	Roger Wiese	Fairport Technologies	Maximising the value of farm records systems.
12.30 - 1.00			General Discussion	Jim Fortune
2 - 2.20	Bill Bowden	Agriculture Western Australia	Decision support tools as a combination of data and pragmatic demands.	David Pannell
2.20-2.40	Bob Blackshaw	Canada via CRC Weed Management Systems Wagga Wagga	Decision support with a Canadian flavour.
2.40-3.00	Dick Medd	NSW Ag & CRC Weed Management Systems Orange	Developing a new herbicide application and getting it into the market place.
3.00-3.20	Art Diggle and Brian Trenbath	Agriculture Western Australia	Current tools for simulation modelling of weed populations
3.40- 4.00	Randall Jones	CRC Weed Management Systems Orange	Surveys - why we need more field information?	Deirdre Lemerle
4.00 -4.20	Toni Nugent / Steve Sutherland	CRC Weed Management Systems Wagga Wagga	Best Bet Management Guides & field demonstrations - how do we assess value?
4.20 - 4.40	Rick Llewellyn	UWA Western Weeds Initiative	Where I might go - proposed work for PhD
4.40 - 5.00	Marta Giesbertz	UWA Western Weeds Initiative	Where I might go - proposed work for PhD

DAY 2

WORKSHOPS: THE WORKSHOP PROBLEMS

On Tuesday morning, the workshop will split into 3 groups to spend time working on each of the 3 problems. Each group will then present its responses for discussion.

The groups will be approximately sociological, economic or production in their bias.

Problem 1.

The CRC /WAHRI have had an exciting breakthrough with their ability to capture and kill weed seeds in the harvest operation. How will you deliver this on a national basis to our farmer clients?

Problem 2.

You must design a single decision support tool for farmers to use as a sounding board for their own ideas on crop management and farming systems when confronted with herbicide resistance.

Problem 3.

In 4 years time you must assess the value of the combined efforts of the CRC/WAHRI in delivering outcomes - how will you do this?

PARTICIPANTS

Dick Medd NSW Ag & CRC Weed Management Systems Orange
Randall Jones CRC Weed Management Systems Orange
David Pannell UWA, and places further south
Steve Trevenan AgricultureWA, Northam
Marta Giesbertz UWA, Western Weeds Initiative (Pgrad)
Bob Blackshaw, Canada via CRC Weed Management Systems Wagga Wagga
Vanessa Stewart, Agriculture Western Australia Merredin
Bill Bowden, Agriculture WA
Jim Fortune CRC Weed Management Systems, Adelaide
Deirdre Lemerle CRC Weed Management Systems Wagga Wagga
Brian Trenbath, Agriculture WA
Keith Alcock AgricultureWA, Northam
Toni Nugent CRC Weed Management Systems Wagga Wagga
Steve Powles UWA, Western Weeds Initiative
Dale Baker, GRDC (invited)
Steve Sutherland, NSW Agriculture & CRC Weed Management Systems Wagga Wagga
Art Diggle, Agriculture WA
Peter Howden CSU, Wagga Wagga (Pgrad)
Jay Cummins Uni of Adelaide, Roseworthy (Pgrad) + TopCrop Coordinator SA
Amir Abadi UWA, Western Weeds Initiative
Sally Marsh UWA/CLIMA
Rick Llewellyn UWA, Western Weeds Initiative (Pgrad)
Ross Britton, PIR(SA) & CRC Weed Management Systems Adelaide
Roger Wiese, Fairport Technologies

Want to know more? Please contact Amir Abadi, the extension coordinator in WAHRI: aabadi@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

SEA News Issue #3

The SEA News index is at http://welcome.to/seanews

Last revised: May 21, 2003.