GIVE SOIL A CHANCE
EXTENSION PROJECTS
GRDC Community Crop Nutrition
(formerly eXtensionAUS Crop Nutrition)
March 2015 – ongoing
A national extension service for the Australian grains industry. Australia's leading researchers and advisors in crop nutrition work together as a Community of Practice (CoP).
Give Soil a Chance prepares weekly web publications. The CoP nominates topics, we prepare drafts and work through a review process to make sure the information represents the latest evidence-based science. The group is coordinated by NSW DPI and supported by funding from the GRDC.
Macadamia Integrated Orchard Management
March 2015 – 2017
Integrated Orchard Management (IOM) is a groundbreaking - or perhaps ground saving - approach to sustaining high productivity in macadamia orchards, and recovering productivity for orchards in decline. IOM evolved through macadamia growers and advisors visiting high producing orchards and coming to a shared vision of what those farms were doing right.
The IOM practice guide (2016 & 2017) helps growers assess the condition of their orchards, and describes the management options for the canopy, orchard floor and drainage.
The IOM case studies guide (2017) tells the stories of ten growers who have used the IOM framework to improve production in their orchards.
The IOM drainage guide (July 2017) provides a three-step approach growers can use to manage orchards with minimal soil erosion and nut loss. These techniques can be adopted in most orchards without specialist technical guidance.
Fruitspotting bugs
2016
Fruitspotting bugs are a major pest that attacks almost all fruit and nut crops grown in the Australian tropics and subtropics.
How do you condense the outcomes of over a decade of research, across several government and private research and development organisations into one farmer friendly management guide? This guide must to be useful for growers of different horticultural crops. That was the challenge for this integrated pest management project.
The Fruitspotting bug management guide promotes horticultural methods to reduce risk, and monitoring strategies to guide reduced, and more targeted, use of chemical controls.
How did it work out? See what you think.
