Product development and research

Product Development and Research at CSD is a great example of interdepartmental collaboration, with all staff across the company contributing in some way to the success of our research and development (R&D) program.

CSD’s Product Development and Research (PD&R) work group comprises of members from each relevant department at CSD to oversee the entire R&D program.

This group has a number of functions including confirming all research is conducted in a scientifically valid manner, maintaining appropriate documentation for future reference and preventing unnecessary duplication of trials. The group also ensures that all research is conducted within legal requirements e.g. APVMA permit conditions.

R&D at CSD takes many forms, as summarised below:

Field trials

Each season the Extension and Development (E&D) team have an extensive network of variety and agronomic trials across all cotton growing regions in Australia. These are generally large-scale trials conducted by the local E&D agronomist in collaboration with the grower.

Product development and research field trials are co-ordinated in collaboration between the Namoi Valley E&D agronomists and CSD’s Research Manager. This involves setting protocols and field plans, preparing seed for planting, conducting field assessments, liaising with staff from other departments for additional technical assistance, entering and analysing data and reporting back to the PD&R Workgroup.

Laboratory

Laboratory staff play an essential role in R&D at CSD. In addition to their primary roles conducting commercial quality assurance testing, this team provides extensive technical support, including weighing biomass samples, conducting germination assessments and various other experiments. Many of these tasks require a high degree of precision and the laboratory staff need to be very adaptable to transition between various tests and methods, which often vary from the standard protocols used for commercial testing.

CSD Farms

The vast majority of R&D field trial management is conducted by CSD Farms staff. This includes field preparation, planting, in-crop management and harvesting of trials. Due to specific trial requirements such as precise requirements for planting conditions, applications of experimental products and management of varying trait packages and maturity stages within a field; management of these trials can be very challenging and a great deal of labour and planning is required in addition to typical commercial cropping requirements.

Seed Increase

The CSD Seed Increase team is an invaluable resource for technical support for R&D, assisting with the collection of field samples and trial monitoring.

Production

Production staff have a range of roles in CSD’s R&D program. This includes securing seed for trials, assisting with the application of experimental seed treatments and ginning of samples after picking. Production staff are also responsible for taking numerous samples throughout the entire delinting and treating processes for the various production optimisation and quality assurance trials.