Fungal foliar pathogens cause significant losses in herbage and seed yields and also in regeneration capacity in annual clover pastures, leading to their rapid deterioration and poor persistence. Host resistance offers the greatest potential for delivering the most cost-effective and long-term control. However, release of new varieties of unknown susceptibilities to major foliar diseaes, the risks posed by new pathogen races to continued use of older varieties, and the lack of flexible management options; together make successful disease management challenging.

Concerns about the response of agricultural production to climate change are increasing. This paper combined the CERES-Rice model with Regional Climate Model (RCM)-PRECIS to simulate both the effects of climate change on rice yields and the efficacy of adaptive options in Northeast China. The findings provide insight into the possible impacts of climate change on rice production and the possible adaptive strategies that could be adopted to cope with future climate change.

Highly alkaline, phytotoxic soils may lack alkaline buffering capacity, making remediation by lowering soil pH feasible. Treatments trialled and compared included application of gypsum, organic additives and leguminous plants. All treatments lowered soil pH, but only gypsum treated soils maintained the lowered pH over the six month trial period. Use of plants to lower soil pH, in conjunction with gypsum to sustain the lowered pH is suggested as an economic means of remediating alkaline soils.

Remote sensing technology was used to measure early crop biomass over time in field plots of canola by using a normalised difference vegetation index, NDVI. In seven experiments, genetic differences in early vigour were clearly apparent, and NDVI was well correlated with final grain yield. Canola breeders may use this technology to select for vigorous genotypes that are more likely to have high yield.

Non-chemical control tactics such as crop competition are urgently needed to combat the rapid spread of herbicide resistant weeds in Australian crops. Large differences were identified between canola genotypes in their competitive ability to suppress weeds and maintain grain yield in weedy conditions.  Choice of strongly competitive canola cultivars, especially hybrids, is a cheap, effective and easy way to reduce weed costs and retard the spread of resistance.

Breeding progress can be hindered by the interaction of environment and genotype (G × E) on soybean seed chemical composition. Although environment was the most important source of variation for most of the analysed chemical components, genotype and G × E contributed significantly to the variability. Several non-transgenic genotypes exhibited superior performance over a wide range of environmental conditions for one or more chemical compounds, and breeders could use these genotypes to broaden the genetic backgrounds of commercial cultivars, or use them directly as raw material.

Virus diseases cause significant yield losses in cereals and are an issue of food and feed safety concern. In this paper we describe comprehensive tools for detecting the causal agents of some less prevalence virus diseases of cereal crops, which affect also annual and perennial grass hosts. Our results revealed a high incidence of some of these viruses in grass hosts, from which may shift to cereal crops that may cause potential threat for stability of cereal production.

There are no regulations to ensure the safety of fodder sold on the domestic market in Western Australia. Because livestock are at risk of annual ryegrass toxicity (ARGT) by ingesting contaminated feed either produced on farm or purchased on the open market, we expressed the results of hay testing as risk categories. Risk categories are easily interpreted by farmers and livestock owners and assist in preventing and managing ARGT.

Forage-based livestock systems are complex and interactions among animals, plants, and the environment exist at several levels of complexity, which can be evaluated using computer modeling. In order to understand this complexity and plan feed supply relative to animal stocking rates, simulations of irrigated and rainfed forage production of Marandu palisadegrass were evaluated using the CROPGRO – Perennial Forage Model. The results suggest that the model can be used to adequately simulate regrowth and production responses to weather and management

Glyphosate is the most important herbicide used in crop production world-wide. Repeated use of glyphoste on crop margins has resulted in the evolution of resistance in annual ryegrass, that can then move into the crop causing problems for farmers. Control of this resistant weed can be achieved through the use of appropriate herbicide mixtures and sequences.