Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia
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Managing aphids and viruses in lupins
No full textAphids reduce yields by direct feeding damage, which causes flower and pod abortion and occasionally plant death in lupins. The extent of damage varies between seasons, but losses can be severe in years that favour aphid population development.
Lupins are most vulnerable to aphids during budding and flowering, as severe feeding damage on growing tips can cause buds to drop, flowers to abort, and reduced pod set. Some lupin varieties are more susceptible to aphids than others.
Aphids transmit serious virus diseases, which reduce yields and contaminate seed stocks. Some species of aphids are more difficult to control than others
Doublegee and its management
No full textDoublegee is a significant weed of agriculture and causes a loss of $20 million annually over an estimated one million hectares of crops and one million hectares of pastures, in Western Australia (WA) alone
Net form net blotch and its management in barley
No full textNet form net blotch is a fungal disease that can reduce yield and grain quality of barley crops. It can vary in appearance depending on the pathogen, variety of barley, and stage of infection. This factsheet describes the symptoms, and how this disease is managed
Annual ryegrass and its management in crops
No full textAnnual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum) is one of the most serious and costly weeds of annual winter cropping systems in southern Australia. It is highly competitive and can compete with a crop as early as the 2-leaf stage.
Annual ryegrass is a winter to spring growing weed that can emerge from late autumn to early spring. The number of emergence flushes and the density of plants that emerge are related to initial seedbank levels and the frequency and amount of rainfall
Field evaluation of female- and male-targeted traps for Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae)
No full textMediterranean fruit fly (Medfly) Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) is a globally significant economic pest for which lure based trapping can be used to monitor established populations and for surveillance. Either female- or male-targeted traps can be used; however, recommendations on which to apply are inconsistent and many programs rely on male-targeted traps. Here, we compare the performance of male-targeted traps (Lynfield Trap with Trimedlure) and female-targeted traps (Biotrap Globe trap with the 3-component lure—TMA Plus) in apple orchards in south-west Western Australia over 2 years (September 2019 to September 2021). Male-targeted traps caught more Medflies overall than female-targeted traps, although the difference was minor. However, female-targeted traps were better at attracting Medfly early in the season when populations were small; and were more likely to capture at least one fly when their paired male-targeted trap caught none. Conversely, male-targeted traps were more likely to capture Medflies late in the season and were more likely to catch high numbers of Medflies. Consequently, female-targeted traps may be better at detecting Medfly early in the season, and male-targeted traps may be better at detecting Medfly abundance late in the season, at least in apple orchards. Our results suggest that either or both trap-types could be used for monitoring Medfly populations, with the optimal solution being dependent on the intended application
FutureSheep – What will pasture production look like in south-west Western Australia in 2050?
No full textThe south-west agricultural region of Western Australia (WA) has become drier and hotter since the 1970’s and future projections indicate this trend will continue – presenting challenges for pasture and livestock production. To help producers adapt to this change in climate, we used the GrassGro™ simulation model to predict pasture productivity in 2050 for eight farming locations in WA. Climate data for 2050 was generated for two greenhouse gas (GHG) pathways, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathways), using change factors from the Climate Change in Australia website. Using these factors, daily rainfall and temperature for 2050 was calculated using historical 2002-2021 data. Atmospheric CO2 levels were set at 395 ppm for the current climate, 500 ppm for 2050 RCP 4.5 and 610 ppm for 2050 RCP 8.5. All model simulations were conducted on ungrazed annual pastures run for 20 years. GrassGro™ was validated for each of the case study sites using the Pastures from Space ™ data for the period 2004 to 2021. The resulting simulations suggest that all sites will experience a loss in annual pasture yield by 2050, with the lower emission pathway (RCP 4.5) resulting in the least reduction in most cases. With an RCP of 4.5 the yield at low to medium rainfall sites is expected to decline by an average of 20% compared to only 6% at higher rainfall sites. The results also suggest that the growing season in 2050 will be shorter at all sites. To maintain current pasture productivity in 2050 will require feedbase adaptation such as increased soil fertility, the adoption of annual or perennial pasture species that can produce similar amounts of dry matter with less rainfall in a shorter growing season and the introduction of summer-active forages
Electric weed control for the management of annual ryegrass and herbicide resistance
No full textElectric weed control is a non-chemical weed management alternative with the potential to address increasing social pressure to reduce chemical applications and minimise the widespread development of herbicide resistance. Electric weed control machinery delivers an electrical current (via the continuous electrode-plant contact method or the spark-discharge method) through the foliage, stems, and roots of weeds, bursting their cells and killing or suppressing the plant. It has the potential to be integrated into current weed management programs in a range of systems with international companies seeking to certify their technology in Australasia in coming years.
Using the Zasso™ XPower machine, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) has illustrated that electric weed control is an effective control strategy that can manage a variety of weed species. In 2023 a greater than 80% reduction in the biomass of glyphosate resistant L. rigidum (Lolium rigidum Gaud.) was observed following electric weed control applications at 2 or 4 km h-1 compared to the application of glyphosate (Roundup UltraMax® at 1.5 L ha-1). Electric weed control also has the potential to be utilised as a crop-topping alternative through applications at faster speeds, which reduces the ‘dose’ of electricity applied. In 2022, such applications did not reduce the L. rigidum seed set but did reduce the seed viability when applications occurred at late tillering. Overall, electric weed control can be an effective L. rigidum management strategy in a variety of agronomic situations with immediate applicability for fence line and firebreak management of resistant populations
Using artificial intelligence for skeleton weed detection from low level aerial imagery
No full textChondrilla juncea (Skeleton weed) has been under an eradication program in Western Australia since 1974. The low-density, wide-spread nature of this slender forb has presented challenges for aerial mapping in the last couple of decades. Recent advances in highresolution imagery captured by drones and small object detection by deep learning neural networks have allowed effective surveillance of this weed. High quality ground truth data was required for detection accuracy levels that match on-ground surveys. Correct identification of individual plants directly on drone imagery was difficult and there is a risk of missing plants which corrupts training dataset.
This paper presents the methods developed to: (1) gather high quality ground truth data, (2) build an initial reference dataset, (3) provide a framework for efficiently 209 collecting fine-tuned data, and (4) producing a deep learning model. Ground level imagery of nearcentimetre geolocated quadrats was captured with a smartphone in a way that facilitated geospatial alignment with drone imagery. Individual plants were annotated using QGIS (an open-source software). These were used to project bounding-box annotations onto individual training tiles taken from drone imagery. We are adapting the workflow to integrate it into the department’s GIS infrastructure to allow labelling and validation of detected plants by field officers. This ground-truth data framework with in-house management of detection models and finetuning halves the costs of processing compared to onground surveillance
Western Australia Pastoral Land Tenure
No full textA map of Western Australia showing the pastoral lease boundaries and names and their tenure.https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/gis_maps/1014/thumbnail.jp
Western Australia Pastoral Land Tenure - Pilbara Region
No full textA map of the Pilbara region of Western Australia showing the pastoral lease boundaries and names and their tenure. Includes an index of pastoral leases.https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/gis_maps/1015/thumbnail.jp