The RWI is driving a new project called the NIR Nutrient Analysis Initiative. This initiative aims to deliver a new approach to testing leaf and petiole nutrients mid-season. This season’s efforts are a collaborative effort between Cotton Seed Distributors, Incitec Pivot Fertilizers, AMPS Agribusiness and Hone.

Petiole testing can be an arduous task, especially in remote areas where a laboratory may not be readily available. Results can take from a few days up to weeks to come back from the laboratory. Often by this stage the results do not necessarily reflect the crops current nutrition status.

Nitrogen use efficiency is a key sustainability target of cotton today. It is a balance between having sufficient nutrients available to the crop to meet production requirements, whilst minimising the risk of off-target losses.

This initiative aims to provide users with almost immediate nutrition results that can be acted upon on the day of testing, addressing the slow turnaround times and enabling more efficient testing, thus reducing the risks of over-application or mis-timed applications of nitrogen and other nutrients.

This will be done utilising a Hone, hand-held near infrared (NIR) scanner. The device shines a bright NIR light through the tissue (leaf or petiole) sample in a specially-made chamber. A receiver in the opposite end of the chamber picks up the transmitted light and plots this as a transmittance graph (wavelength v intensity).

This technology is proven with live soil nutrition, grain moisture and protein testing programs already in use across Australia. This season we aim to build a robust algorithm, effective across the growing regions of Australia.