Cotton Seed Distributors (CSD) Farms and Lower Namoi Cotton Growers Association (CGA) hosted its annual field day last week.
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Around 100 growers were in attendance at the field day on Friday, February 21 which was held at CSD's production facilities due to wet weather.
CSD extension and development agronomist for Namoi Valley Bob Ford said numbers were slightly reduced compared to previous years but they couldn't complain about the "lovely rain."
"We were quite willing to sacrifice a few numbers for the rain," he said.
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Farmers came from right across the region, including the Lower Namoi, Upper Namoi, Gwydir and Macintyre, as well as around 25 students from Sydney university.
"That's a bit of an annual event," Mr Ford said.
"They come up and have a week up here with various agricultural companies, and our part is they come to our CSD field day.
"We're sort of spreading the word and giving them a bit of an insight into extension as well as cotton."
There were a range of presentations on the day on a variety of topics, given by representatives from different organisations which Mr Ford said went really well.
"We've had quite a bit of feedback this week that they were really good talks which we're quite happy with obviously," he said.
"We tried to have a bit of a mixture - CSIRO, Department of Agriculture, Cotton Australia and ourselves (CSD), and it worked pretty well."
CSIRO gave a presentation on variety and plant stress and CSIRO combined with NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) to discuss nutrition and water strategies.
CSD showcased new tools and there was also a presentation on FastStart™ trials and Verticillium wilt.
"We talked about various things that were pretty pertinent at the time," Mr Ford said.
"We talked about nutrition, we talked about plant stress - ways to try to minimise that - and we talked about breeding programs; which new varieties that are potentially coming through.
"The CSD team gave a really good summary of the outcomes of the CSD Ambassador Network Program and some of the outcomes from that program over the last five years and that was well received.
"We've done a lot of work, connected a lot of data, and people were really interested to hear what's come out of that program.
"We covered many of the actual issues that were in existence at the current time of events, and hopefully farmers can take that back to their farms and hopefully implement some of the things they learned."
Overall, Mr Ford said it was a really successful day.
"We're trying to build it into a bigger field that people will come to and see new research as well as existing research," he said.
"And the beauty of CSD Farms at Narrabri is that we've got access to a majority of actual research that's right there at the Cotton Australia research institute.
"With the universities turning up, we're trying to expand that and capture a few more universities, and it should hopefully grow into one of the bigger field days of the year."