Cotton Seed Distributors article

A video version is available at www.csd.net.au/  

Im talking to Sandra Deutcher from CSIRO based at the Australian Cotton Research Institute.

Sandra, I thought we might discuss NutriLOGIC. There has just been a recent upgrade and release. But for those listeners that are not familiar with NutriLOGIC, can you explain a little bit about what the program is?

Yes, sure Rob. Well basically, based on up to date cotton nutrition research, NutriLOGIC helps interpret soil, petiole and leaf test information. So with the soil component its to 30cms so it helps interpret test results to 30cms and also deals with nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and sulphur and sodicidy and salinity if you have got any issues there. With the petiole, it basically allows the data entry and analysis of your petiole in season petiole samples and it helps you decide on whether you need to add any additional nitrogen fertiliser to get the optimum yield for that cotton crop. The leaf component, during the season you can enter leaf test information and NutriLOGIC will analyse that and interpret that to let you know whether you need to apply any additional fertilisers and the nutrients that the leaf deals with is all macro and micro nutrients.

So it is a complete package then of all nutrients basically?

Well it certainly is a complete package for the decision support side of things but it also contains additional information and so I am talking about links to SoilPAK, to NutriPAK, so there has been a lot of work put into getting those packs up and running. It also provides you with a link to one of Ian Rochesters latest articles on nutrient removal so it gives you information about the yield of your cotton crop and what nutrients were likely to be removed from that seed cotton.

So, nutrients balance in other words?

Basically yes.

So the changes that have been made, what has actually changed compared to the NutriLOGIC that was around before?

Well the main changes are within the soil component. Instead of just putting in results based on nitrogen it helps interpret results from phosphorous, potassium and sulphur and also the sodicity and salinity levels and not only that it interprets that information based on a little bit of your cropping history and whether there is a green manure crop in there. More soil compaction data, so how compacted is your soil. So it just gives you more accurate results and that’s the soil side of things and then the brand new component, and its based on a lot of work by Ian Rochester is your leaf calculations and that encompasses all your micro and macro nutrients and it helps you decide on whether you need more fertiliser for any of those nutrients.

So can you go through what sort of field data the program will handle?

Yes sure. Well before the season commences you have got your soil tests, so data that you will get from what ever company you decide to go with but as I mentioned before that’s to 30cms. We haven’t done any work at depth with any of those nutrients so that’s to 30cms. Also in season your petiole analysis and also your leaf analysis which happens at much, around about much the same time, your leaf and your petiole.

So, Sandra how can growers access the program?

OK. Well once they are in the Cotton Catchment Commununities CRC Website which is www.cotton.crc.org.au they can then go to weather tools and if you go down to agronomy you will find a whole range of tools and NutriLOGIC as we can see with the little red updated beside it, if you click on that there you get to the NutriLOGIC on the web. It is quite straight forward.

Well Sandra can you show us some examples of how you would enter soil analysis data into the program?

Yes sure Rob, once you are on the NutriLOGIC main menu, just click on the nutrient recommendation soil which is the first one. OK so it brings you to a whole new page and if you have got a soil analysis report from the lab then all you need to do is basically enter the information from here onto the screen. Firstly, we need to select what region you are in so this is basically based on temperatures so here we warm, so Emerald is very hot etc. Soil type, you have got loam, light, clay, medium clay, heavy clay. Soil structure whether it is compacted or not, previous crops so last winter may have been cereal and the summer before that cotton, so choose that one. Whether there is a current green manure crop in, so it is a simple yes or no. The soil nitrate reading from your soil analysis report, so that one is 25. Now when was the soil nitrate reading taken, was it July, August, September for example, August. So then we just enter from the soil analysis report. So phosphorus is 13, potassium is 1.2 the cation exchange is 3.9, the sulphate sulphur 11, the ESP is 2.1, electrical conductivity 0.28 and then we just click on do calculation for the recommendations. So if we scroll down to the bottom of the page you will get all your recommendations and you can neatly print that out.

OK, so easy basically, early season collecting from soil test results, enter those in and its giving off the results.

That’s right.

Sandra works well for soil tests. Could you show us how the program works for petiole nitrogen?

Yes sure Rob. I will just click on back to NutriLOGIC main menu. I will click on nitrogen recommendations – Petiole. OK so we need to select the nearest silo station from where your farm is, so mine is Narrabri West Post Office but there is hundreds to choose from. The crops sow date, so we need to know what the sow date of the crop was because it needs to know that plus the met station to be able to work out day degrees automatically. So the 11/10/2005, so the first sample may have been in December so you usually do samples between 600 and 900 day degrees after sowing. So the 21st December, just before Christmas we may have had a reading of 15,000 parts per million. Our second sample date would be approximately 10 days later or the following week so that’s in December, so the 31st of December and our nitrate nitrogen reading could have been 10,000. What we need to do now is click on ‘do calculation’ and it will calculate whether we need to have the side dress application. So the recommendation here is based on those results it indicates that you need to apply just a small amount of side dress, 50kgs of nitrogen per hectare. The other thing in these pages is there is more information on nutrient sampling for soil petiole and leaf so if we go into the sampling guidelines it brings up that CRC information sheet on nutrient sampling so that is pretty up to date information on how to actually get the samples.

So Sandra if anybody has any problems with the program or they want to find out more about how to use it, who should they contact?

They can contact the TRC with feedback or questions related to NutriLOGIC or they can also go down to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘submit problems, questions or suggestions’.

OK thank you very much for that Sandra.