An innovative technology in the Australian cotton industry is gaining a foothold overseas.
Some years ago, scientists in Queensland began trialling the use of an unlikely piece of material — biodegradable film — to boost yield and maximise water usage.
The film is laid at the same time as the seed is planted.
By trapping the thermal units from the sun, it raises the soil temperature several degrees, which is beneficial for getting cotton seeds established.
"It helps us get cotton in a little bit earlier, it creates a greenhouse effect for the cotton, keeps it warmer, helps it grow quicker, little bit of water efficiency, things like that," David McGrath, chief of One Crop, said.
"There's potential with the same amount of water to increase the yield — I'd like to think up to 50 per cent.
"We've come close to that — very close to that — here on the Darling Downs. We've also achieved that on the Texas pan handle."
Nic Clapham is a third-generation cotton grower at Cecil Plains, on the central Darling Downs. He has been experimenting with growing his crop under film to give his cotton an early boost, and potentially reduce or redirect water usage.
"It sounded like an innovative idea and we're always looking at new things," he said.
"I thought that was something we could potentially do to improve our cotton."
This season on Mr Clapham's property there is no cotton in the ground where it normally would be, after it was hailed out for the second year running. Still, he said he remained optimistic.
"The first year it got hailed out, we grew that cotton out and we still saw a bale per hectare or better than a bale a hectare under that film, even in the hailed-out scenario," Mr Clapham said.
"Last year was probably our best representative trial against non-film cotton — [it was a] very dry year, it had a very cold start, and the cotton not under film we had to replant twice due to the very cold start, and the stuff under film we got to grow through."
Like with all new ideas, the journey to bring biodegradable film to Australia's cotton industry has not been without hurdles.
"Good ideas are not necessarily good ideas unless they can be commercially rolled out," Mr McGrath said.
Following field trials several years ago in Central Queensland, Mr McGrath was put in touch with Michael Freeman from Norseman, a company that makes precision planters.
"They needed us to develop some machinery to lay it on a commercially viable broadacre scale," Mr Freeman said.
"So we spent 2015 and 2016 developing the machinery, and the last couple of years have been spent demonstrating [and] putting in field trials, both here in Australia and in the US.
"The front end is exactly the style of planter that would be used to plant sorghum or cotton with — what's different is the back end of it.
"In the same pass we plant the seed and then lay the degradable film over the top of it."
The cost to put a crop under film varies from about $200 to $330 per hectare, depending on row spacing.
"So obviously we've got to make a bale a hectare more, at $500 a bale, to sort of make it worthwhile," Mr Clapham said.
"Because you're not doing it to break even — you want to make a bit more money out of it."
More data, collected over several years, is required to gauge how big of an impact the film makes in terms of water efficiency and yield.
But Mr Freeman, who has spent the past couple of years working his way across the United States putting cotton and other crops under film — including corn and hemp — said the results spoke for themselves.
"In our first season in the US we put in 50 acres over half a dozen sites, and this season in the US we put in 300-odd acres over 12 sites in nine states," Mr Freeman said.
"We've had some of the best results we've ever had in west Texas — we had a dryland cotton crop there that's put on an extra 40 per cent yield."
Gaining a foothold in the US market has been a huge coup, given the size and scale of crops grown that could potentially be put under film.
The next big goal is China
"There's 2 million hectares of cotton in Xinjiang, and 100 per cent of that crop is using plastic," Mr McGrath said.
"Because it can snow maybe two to three times around planting, which cotton does not like, they've been using just a straight polyethylene film for maybe 20 years to create a greenhouse.
"It's not pretty, but they absolutely rely on it. They have no biodegradables.
"They send like an army of people in to just roll it [the plastic] up by hand, and it's a mess, its completely unsustainable."
But finding a place in the Chinese cotton market has proven tricky.
The manual nature of the industry means heavy and expensive machinery like the film layer is totally foreign.
"We've been trialling the product over there for three years," Mr McGrath said.
"We have a level of certification from the authorities over there now, to start to put the product out commercially."
Depending on the type of soil, the biodegradable film takes between six and eight weeks to break down.
After 90 days, it is completely gone.
Source: abc.net.au