National services body Dairy Australia will receive approximately US$1.5 million from the Australian Government to support nitrogen use efficiency research development and engineering or RD&E as part of its involvement in the cross project titled RDC More profit from nitrogen: enhancing the nutrient use efficiency of intensive cropping and pasture.
The project will receive up to US$5.8 million directed from the Rural R&D for Profit program.
The project aims to identify practices to optimize nitrogen use efficiency.
Previous research has found small improvements in farm scale nitrogen use efficiency can provide substantial increases in productivity and profit.
This project will be looking for synergies between water and nitrogen inputs, quantifying the rate and timing of nitrogen supply through mineralization; assessing the cost effectiveness of enhanced efficiency fertilizers and evaluating new digital, precision and spatial technologies.
“Nitrogen is a significant cost to dairy producers and a significant component of their environmental foot print,” said CEO Ian Halliday.
“This project will help producers improve their nutrition management and thus their profitability by increasing the productivity per unit of nitrogen applied.”
“Improved productivity per unit of nitrogen will also result in improved environmental outcomes.”
The project is a partnership between the significant nitrogen-using industries of cotton, dairy, sugar and horticulture.
It will be led by the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC) in conjunction with fellow rural research and development corporations (RDCs) Dairy Australia, Sugar Research Australia and Horticulture Innovation Australia and 15 other research partners.
The project aims to improve the profitability of 600 irrigated cotton growers, 500 dairy farmers, sugar growers and more than 1,000 fruit growers.
It will also help all four industries to reduce the impact of off-farm nutrients on water quality.
The dairy component of the nitrogen use efficiency project will involve a number of research partners who will contribute an additional US$500,000.
They are Queensland University of Technology, University of Melbourne, Tasmanian Institute for Agriculture and the NSW Department of Primary Industries.
The More profit from nitrogen project will run until 2020.
