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Benchmarking Water Use Efficiency in the Cotton and Grains Industries
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Bray, Stuart Montgomery, Janelle |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | The cotton industry continues to strive for improved water use efficiency (WUE), but until recently was unable to quantify the improvements it has made. Unfortunately irrigation benchmarking data has in the past not been well recorded. The performance indicators measured are generally not well defined and calculations have not been standard across the industry. There is a lack of good annual and robust benchmarking data not only for the cotton industry, but the whole irrigation sector. In 2008, NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) benchmarked irrigation water use for the 2006/2007 season from 37 cotton irrigation farms using WatertrackTM Rapid. Having seen the value of this data, the grains industry has joined the cotton industry to expand the collection of this important irrigation benchmarking information. In 2009, water use figures were collected from 46 cotton and 24 wheat farms located from Hillston in NSW to Emerald in Qld. The web-based benchmarking program Watertrack RapidTM was used to provide standardised and comparable irrigation benchmarks. Watertrack RapidTM generates a number of irrigation performance indicators such as Gross Production Water Use Index (GPWUI), Irrigation Water Use Index (IWUI) and Crop Water Use Index (CWUI). It also calculates crop water use and provides an estimation of on-farm water losses. The survey data showed a wide range of irrigation performance and water volume estimation and measurement across the industry. It found the average GPWUIfarm for the cotton industry was 1.14 bales per megalitre. This figure is a representative benchmark for the cotton industry for 2008/2009 and confirmed the previously revealed 40 per cent improvement by NSW DPI, since the last industry estimate 10 years ago. For irrigated wheat, this is the first industry wide data collected. It establishes an irrigation benchmark for average GPWUIfarm of 0.85 tonnes per ML for the 2008 season. The average GPWUIfarm of 1.14 bales/ML and 0.85 tonnes/ML is representative of the cotton and wheat industry water use in 2008/2009. It is these figures that can be used to benchmark water use so industry can gauge if it is further improving and determine the rate of improvement over time. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.insidecotton.com/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/2996/Paper_Montgomery_Water_Use_Efficiency%20(1).pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
