Andrew French, Nandina, Theodore, photographed in 2017 for Queensland Country Life. File picture by Kelly Butterworth.

Given the choice, Theodore cotton grower Andrew French would much rather have had a dry season than the one experienced in 2023-24.

He was lucky to avoid flooding at the family farm, Nandina, but the combination of frequent waterlogging, prolonged overcast and wet weather smashed yields and impacted lint quality.

Conditions might have saved a few irrigations, but cost them dearly in extra sprays, yield loss and price downgrades.

Mr French and his wife Jessica crop 375ha of owned and leased irrigated land on the outskirts of Theodore, in central Queensland's Dawson Valley.

The third generation cotton grower returned to Nandina in 2013 and four years ago took over from parents Peter and Diana.

The Frenches are primarily cotton producers, although they have grown summer cereals and pulses and winter cereal and chickpea crops when the opportunity presented.

"We'll grow anything, but it all revolves around cotton, because it's the best return we have available to us per hectare of land," he said.

"While the price is good, we'll always focus on cotton. We have enough water to grow cotton every year."

Mr French said last season started off on a good note, albeit with a dry outlook, but above average rain was recorded from November to January and again in March and April.

"We didn't have big totals, but we had a lot of overcast weather pretty much all the way till harvest," he said.

"We had repeated waterlogging, a lot of fruit loss, everything opened up in weather, a lot of a boll rot, tight lock and extremely bad quality grades. We couldn't do anything about it. It's probably the worst year for weather that our farm has seen since the floods in 2010-11."

The 220 hectares of Sicot 606B3F harvested in May yielded about 30 per cent less than expected.

Quality wise, heavy discounts were received thanks to heavy colour downgrades, a considerable amount of light spot, high micronaire and short fibre length. The combination of issues resulted in the worst quality downgrades Dawson Valley growers had seen since major flooding 13 years earlier.

Mr French also grew sorghum which was double cropped on the other 150ha of irrigation land. There was a good first cut at the start of January, but the second harvest in May was hit hard by weather, affecting overall yield and quality.

The late harvest has delayed ground preparation for the next season's cotton crop.

Preparation began straight after harvest with mulching, root cutting and spreading a blend of monoammonium phosphate and muriate of potash at 250-300kg/ha, depending on soil test results.

The next steps were pupae busting, and running through the field with offset discs to break down clods before reforming hills.

Nitrogen granules have been deep banded at 200-350kg/ha following the offsets while reforming hills, followed by a cultipacker with furrowing tynes to finish off bed preparation prior to planting.

Planting for 2024-25 is scheduled to start in the last week of August or early September, depending on temperatures.

Mr French plans to plant 150ha of Sicot 606B3F, 150ha of Sicot 746B3F and 60ha of the new XtendFlex variety Siokra 253B3XF, also known as CSX4389B3XF.

The Sicot 606B3F typically outyields most varieties but has ongoing quality concerns. On the other hand, Sicot 746B3F is a tried and tested variety with a good yield potential which usually delivers better quality lint.

Mr French said the new variety interested him because of its okra leaf open canopy, which he said had to be "a good thing".

Siokra 253B3XF is tolerant to glufosinate, dicamba and glyphosate, rated resistant to fusarium, verticillium and cotton bunchy top, and performed surprisingly well in 1000ha of grower trials across northern Australia in 2023-24.

This season's crops at Nandina will be planted at 160,000 seeds per hectare on 1m row spacings using a Norseman precision planter.

"We do push the start of the planting window on temperature pretty hard, so you have to put a lot down to hopefully get 60-70pc establishment," Mr French said.

Given an average season, the crop would receive three in-crop herbicide sprays to manage weeds such as feathertop Rhodes grass, bell vine, peach vine and sesbania pea.

Crops will be monitored during the season for pests, such as green mirid, green vegetable bug and pale cotton stainers.

Two in-crop applications of nitrogen fertiliser will be expected with the majority side dressed at about the first square stage, followed by a water run application of urea near peak flowering. Rates will be calculated closer to the time based on prevailing weather conditions and yield potential.

Crops are irrigated using a siphon and flood furrow irrigation system, guided by soil moisture probes.

Depending on rainfall, the cotton will likely receive seven to eight irrigations averaging one megalitre per hectare.

On-farm dams at Nandina are used to hold supplementary water supplied by the Theodore Water irrigation scheme and pumped out of the Dawson River. Their primary function is to store unused water allocation from one water year as carryover for the next crop or season.

Locally owned by its 44 allocation holders since 2018, Theodore Water typically starts the new water year in October with zero allocation.

"The Dawson River doesn't have any major infrastructure on it," Mr French said.

"The only river storages are a series of small weirs, but it's a good river, it will run at some stage with most years running before Christmas; we'll only have allocation once the river runs."

Modules will be sent to Moura Cotton for ginning.

This article appeared in Australian Cotton & Grains Outlook