Climate change takes many headlines for threatening the Pacific. However, to secure the region’s shared food culture, soil scientists are working with Pacific farmers to provide precision agriculture tools that could herald a new era in regional farming.
Strategic use of phosphorus fertilisers can ensure higher crop yields. High yields minimise the amount of land devoted to food production, maximise the use of scarce rainfall and help keep food supplies stable and relatively cheap. Getting the balance right is important in an increasingly crowded world.
A plant-growth-regulating spray might be the solution for vineyards affected by heatwaves.
Pollinators such as bees, birds, bats and butterflies are in decline globally, a threat to biodiversity and food production all over the world. The importance of pollinators isn’t new to many indigenous communities around the world.
A huge amount of effort is going into protecting the Great Barrier Reef - often the kilometres away from where the coral is actually living. Researchers now have a better understanding of the system of erosion and sediment transport processes connecting agricultural land with water quality in the Reef. Critical to improving land management practices.
Oldman saltbush is a regular sight for regional tourists, and a CSIRO variety of the native shrub has been found to improve profitability for graziers in Australia’s most marginal regions.
Taking product from farm to market in Australia can involve distances of hundreds of kilometres and high freight costs. A group of NSW and Queensland councils has turned to computer modelling to work out where local infrastructure bottlenecks are, and how they could be fixed.
On the farm, the negative impact to beneficial insects can sometimes negate the positive effects of insecticides. But there's a lack of research quantifying non-target impacts of one particular group, neonicotinoids.
Global trade means global pests – not just in the way they spread but in the way they breed. Hybridisation of two moth species has now been confirmed, creating a fast-generating, pesticide-resistant mega pest which threatens broad-acre crops across the Americas. What’s next?
