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Food and beverage waste – a national perspective
No full textSam Oakden is the Head of the Australian Food Pact at Stop Food Waste Australia. The Pact is a pre-competitive collaboration to make Australia’s food system more sustainable, resilient, and circular. It’s a multi-year commitment by the businesses who grow, make and sell our food to develop solutions and implement change at scale. Sam has an agricultural science background and has worked on the implementation of the Australian National Food Waste Strategy since early 2018. At Turning the Dial, Sam’ presentation was titled Food and Beverage Waste, from a national perspective
Resource Assessment Report for Western Australian Salmon in Western Australia
No full textThis document provides a cumulative description and assessment of the Western Australian Salmon Resource (Resource) and all fishing activities (i.e., fisheries / fishing sectors) affecting this Resource in WA. The overall Resource comprises a single species, Western Australian salmon, caught within WA, in both the WCB and SCB. This species is primarily captured during the annual autumn ‘salmon run’ by recreational fishers and commercial beach seine fishers that operate on the South Coast. The report contains information relevant to assist the assessment of the Resource against Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act export approval requirements / the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Fishing and for other reporting requirements, e.g., Status of Australian Fish Stocks (SAFS)
Clarifying the natural distribution of Saccostrea Dollfus and Dautzenberg, 1920 (edible rock oyster) species in Western Australia to guide development of a fledgling aquaculture industry
No full textRock oysters of the genus Saccostrea currently form the basis of a significant aquaculture industry in Australia, which is poised for expansion regionally, including within Western Australia. To limit the potential negative consequences of aquaculture-related translocations, current policy in Western Australia requires the local sourcing of rock oyster aquaculture broodstock. This policy, by definition, requires the identification of the optimal aquaculture candidate species from those naturally present in each region under consideration for edible oyster production. Given historical taxonomic confusion, and limited biogeographical data about Saccostrea throughout Western Australia, this study sought to provide baseline distributional data of the genus to underpin the potential development of the industry. A total of 498 oyster specimens were collected across the known range of the genus and vouchered at the Western Australian Museum. Sampling was opportunistic in nature but also included areas with potential or established interest in aquaculture development. All specimens were sequenced for a region of the 16S rRNA gene (488 bp), which is a well-established marker for resolving taxonomy of the genus, with a large comparative dataset available. This new dataset resolved five genetic lineages of rock oyster within the region, which were then mapped to assess distributions. These lineages were designated as Saccostrea lineage A, Saccostrea lineage B, Saccostrea lineage J, S. glomerata, and S. scyphophilla (Peron and Lesueur, 1807), following an established nomenclatural scheme in a group with considerable taxonomic flux. This study extended the known distribution of lineages previously reported in Western Australia (Saccostrea lineage A, and S. scyphophilla) in addition to identifying two previously unrecorded lineages (Saccostrea lineage B and Saccostrea lineage J). Understanding the current distribution and nature of rock oyster distributions in Western Australia is fundamental to the development of a sound policy framework, as well as a research and development strategy for a strong and sustainable aquaculture industry
The stock assessment theory of relativity: deconstructing the term \u27data-limited\u27 fisheries into components and guiding principles to support the science of fisheries management
No full textThe term \u27data-limited fisheries\u27 is a catch-all to generally describe situations lacking data to support a fully integrated stock assessment model. Data conditions range from data-void fisheries to those that reliably produce quantitative assessments. However, successful fishery assessment can also be limited by resources (e.g., time, money, capacity). The term \u27data-limited fisheries\u27 is therefore too vague and incomplete to describe such wide-ranging conditions, and subsequent needs for management vary greatly according to each fishery’s context. Here, we acknowledge this relativity and identify a range of factors that can constrain the ability of analyses to inform management, by instead defining the state of being \u27data-limited\u27 as a continuum along axes of data (e.g., type, quality, and quantity) and resources (e.g., time, funding, capacity). We introduce a tool (the DLMapper) to apply this approach and define where a fishery lies on this relativity spectrum of limitations (i.e. from no data and no resources to no constraints on data and resources). We also provide a ranking of guiding principles, as a function of the limiting conditions. This high-level guidance is meant to identify current actions to consider for overcoming issues associated with data and resource constraints given a specific \u27data-limited\u27 condition. We apply this method to 20 different fisheries to demonstrate the approach. By more explicitly outlining the various conditions that create \u27data-limited situations\u27 and linking these to broad guidance, we aim to contextualize and improve the communication of conditions, and identify effective opportunities to continue to develop and progress the science of \u27limited\u27 stock assessment in support of fisheries management
Shallow incorporation of lime and gypsum has limited benefit over the sole-surface application of lime for improving grain yield and water use efficiency in the low rainfall region of Western Australia
No full textSoil acidity is one of the major soil constraints for the grain-growing industry in Australia and around the globe. While surface liming is widely adopted, it has been proven ineffective for the timely amelioration of subsoil acidity. There is a growing interest in finding alternative approaches for the effective amelioration of subsoil acidity, especially for low-rainfall regions. In a controlled environment and a field experiment, we examined whether the combined application of lime and gypsum would be more effective than lime alone under no-till (NT) and shallow strategic tillage (ST) systems for reducing the impact of soil acidity and increasing grain yield.
The controlled environment experiment highlighted that lime increased soil pH and decreased the soil exchangeable aluminium concentration (EAC) which resulted in significantly better root growth. In the field experiment, we found that the lime plus gypsum treatment, in most cases, did not significantly affect grain yield, water use efficiency (WUE) or grain quality compared to the lime treatment alone. Lime incorporation with a shallow ST was more effective in increasing soil pH and decreasing EAC at 10–20 cm depth, compared to the surface application of lime without tillage. However, ST did not affect the grain yield and WUE of wheat in 2017 and 2018 and significantly decreased the grain yield and WUE of canola in 2019 and barley in 2020. We found that measurements of either soil pH or EAC were equivalent in their ability to explain and predict the root growth of major grain crops. The results indicate that soil pH is the simplest indicator for grain growers to measure the improvement of soil acidity with liming and its impact on root growth and crop productivity. We recommend the application of lime as the preferred amendment on acidic sands, while shallow ST should be avoided in the low rainfall region. Further studies involving deep ST are warranted
PestFacts WA Issue 11 - July 2023
No full textPestFacts WA Issue 11 - July 2023 contents: Native budworm activity updatehttps://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/fc_pestfactswa/1006/thumbnail.jp
PestFacts WA Issue 18 - September 2023
No full textPestFacts WA Issue 18 - September 2023 contents: Cereal cyst nematodeshttps://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/fc_pestfactswa/1015/thumbnail.jp
Productive Potassium: Do K fertilisers increase pumpkin yields in Carnarvon? Evidence suggests they do.
No full textThe alluvial soils in Carnarvon are well-drained and loamy, and have a high natural fertility. The region has low rainfall with a warm semi-arid climate and a reliable irrigation supply. This makes it well-suited to growing a wide range of horticultural crops. There are about 170 horticultural properties in the area that produce various vegetable crops, such as tomato, capsicum, eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin and fruit crops, with an average gross value more than $110 million per annum. Previous studies on vegetables conducted by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s (DPIRD) Carnarvon Research Station showed that nitrogen was the only yield-limiting factor, with occasional trace element deficiencies. However, local growers have been applying a range of potassium (K) fertilisers, often at high rates, regardless of high K in the soil and irrigation water
Utility of body and otolith morphometry to discriminate cryptic juveniles of two sympatric red snappers (Perciformes: Lutjanidae)
No full textThe sympatric red snappers, Lutjanus erythropterus and Lutjanus malabaricus, are highly valued by commercial and recreational fishers along the tropical northern coasts of Australia and throughout their distribution. Studies on the life history and ecology of these congeners are confounded by difficulties in distinguishing the cryptic juveniles of each species (i.e., \u3c 200 mm total length). This study aimed to validate a robust and cost-effective method to discriminate these juveniles using body and/or otolith morphometric data in a multivariate analysis. Juvenile samples were collected from the northwest (n = 71) and northeast (n = 19) coasts of Australia, and species identification was confirmed using DNA barcoding. The most parsimonious multivariate models achieved accurate species prediction rates of 98.8%, which consisted of just three body variables (dorsal fin length, the distance from the snout to the anterior edge of the eye, and either jaw length or distance from the snout to the preoperculum). The high level of discrimination for these cryptic juveniles highlights the robustness of this morphometric approach. The slightly lower rate of discrimination using otolith morphology (84.9%) was associated with greater regional variation in L. malabaricus between the northwest and northeast coasts. Slight variations in otolith shape are typically used to determine stock structure, which highlights the potential need to collect samples over a broader area of a species geographic range when using an otolith morphometric discrimination model. The method outlined in this study could be applied to distinguish other cryptic congeneric fish species, including from archived otolith collections. Moreover, this method has the potential to be utilized in assessing species compositions using body measurements from in situ stereo-video
How sensitive are catchment runoff estimates to on-farm storages under current and future climates?
No full textStorage of water in farm dams is important to support irrigation, stock requirements and domestic uses when reticulated water is unavailable. Farm dams that fill by intercepting landscape runoff change the total volume and seasonality of catchment streamflow, potentially impacting water policy outcomes. While numerous studies have quantified how climate change and farm dams independently change streamflow characteristics, few studies have investigated their interactions. This study investigates the interactions between farm dams and climate change in the Murray-Darling Basin of southern and eastern Australia. We use hydrological modelling that explicitly represent farm dams and remotely sensed data describing historical farm dam development to assess the impacts of farm dams for 112 catchments on catchment runoff under current and future climates. Our analysis compares current and future runoff estimates to those derived without explicitly incorporating farm dam impacts to better understand the importance of farm dams in water resources assessments. We find that modelling farm dams in these catchments improves the performance of the hydrological model relative to a traditional rainfall-runoff model ignoring the effects of farm dams. The current level of farm dam development in the Murray-Darling Basin is estimated to reduce annual catchment runoff by 13% (in the range of 8%–19%) under the historical climate across the 112 catchments investigated here. We find that explicitly modelling farm dams increases the sensitivity of simulated streamflow to climate by approximately 10%. This is primarily because farm dams introduce additional catchment storage and water extractions that do not directly follow processes represented in traditional rainfall-runoff models. Our analysis offers important information for water policymakers in Australia and globally. Firstly, explicit modelling of farm dams is critical to understanding the future availability of water resources. Secondly, explicit modelling of farm dams allows their impacts on catchment runoff to be explored under current and future climates, and for policies to manage the impacts of dams to be investigated