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Cotton ready for second attempt in WA
1 Jul 2004
A second attempt to establish a cotton industry at Ord River, this time based on the GM variety Bollgard, is ready to go, says WA Agriculture Department researcher Geoff Strickland. The Ord River Scheme, in WA's far north, is centred around Australia's largest irrigation dam, Lake Argyle.
Commercial cotton growing there was abandoned 30 years ago due to a major pest attack, mainly by three caterpillar species: heliophus, pink bollworm, cluster caterpillar. The cotton needed to be sprayed up to 40 times per growing, so the last commercial crop at the Ord was in 1974.
Mr Strickland believes Monsanto's Bollgard would make an Ord River cotton industry viable again. Bollgard reduces the need to spray for the three caterpillar pests to nil. But some spraying would still be needed to combat sucking insects, against which Bollgard has no defence.
The WA Agriculture Department is conducting trials. A range of other crops, including sweetcorn, peanut, chickpea and pigeon pea, will be grown alongside the GM cotton to assess their value as "refuge" crops.
Farm Weekly, 1/7/04.
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