Academic literature on the topic 'Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES)'

Between 1920 and 1950, the Queensland sugar industry was troubled by many of the diseases that plagued sugar cane, often in serious proportions. Financial losses from these disease outbreaks in the 1920s prompted the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) and the Queensland Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES) to employ university-trained plant pathologists who undertook research into identifying the diseases, understanding their etiology and devising control strategies to reduce their impact. Archival records, annual reports of both organizations and published scientific papers are used to reconstruct the programmes of research undertaken into these diseases. Control strategies developed as a result of this research included restrictions on the movement of cane plants, the establishment of quarantine districts, use of disease-free planting material, pre-treatment of planting material with hot water and/or solutions of organic mercurial fungicides, and 'roguing' of diseased cane plants. Consequently, by 1950, gumming, Fiji and downy mildew diseases — three of the most troublesome cane diseases in Australia — had been virtually eliminated in sugar-producing districts.

Enhanced run-off of nutrients from agricultural development in catchments bordering the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is regarded as a potential threat to inshore reefs. In an attempt to better understand the impact of river run-off, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) initiated a sampling program to measure nutrient concentrations in rivers draining to the GBR shelf. Our longest data set is from the Tully River in the wet tropics, sampled in collaboration with the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES). After thirteen years, we ask whether there has been any change in river nutrient levels. Water samples were collected at monthly intervals, with additional, wet-season samples. In recent years, a trend of increase in nitrate (at low flow) and particulate nitrogen concentrations has been observed. In this period, a significant increase in agricultural activity has occurred within the Tully basin. The area under sugarcane and bananas has doubled and fertiliser nitrogen use has increased by 130%. Increased concentrations of nitrogen in the river system may be a consequence of this increase in agricultural activity.

Most sugarcane breeding programs in Australia use large unreplicated trials to evaluate clones in the early stages of selection. Commercial varieties that are replicated provide a method of local control of soil fertility. Although such methods may be useful in detecting broad trends in the field, variation often occurs on a much smaller scale. Methods such as spatial analysis adjust a plot for variability by using information from immediate neighbours. These techniques are routinely used to analyse cereal data in Australia and have resulted in increased accuracy and precision in the estimates of variety effects. In this paper, spatial analyses in which the variability is decomposed into local, natural, and extraneous components are applied to early selection trials in sugarcane. Interplot competition in cane yield and trend in sugar content were substantial in many of the trials and there were often large differences in the selections between the spatial and current method used by the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations. A joint modelling approach for tonnes sugar per hectare in response to fertility trends and interplot competition is recommended.

The relative importance of demographic or 'grower characteristics' as variables that influence adoption of environmentally innovative canegrowing practices is questioned in this thesis. Research, which involved a quantitative study of over 1000 sugarcane producers from Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, indicates that 'socio-cultural' factors are equally, and in some cases more, significant predictors of the adoption of environmentally innovative canegrowing practices than growers' personal attributes. The research indicates that the social, cultural and economic contexts that growers operate within considerably influence the extent to which knowledge is acquired and environmentally innovative canegrowing practices adopted. Analysis of the data utilises a range of demographic and property characteristics variables, and socio-cultural variables (such as group involvement, gendered division of labour and on-farm knowledge production) to determine their relationship to the adoption of environmentally innovative canegrowing practices.

Research and development into new and environmentally innovative canegrowing practices, as well as the transfer of such innovations, has primarily occurred through the medium of science and technology. Established methods of 'extension', which have previously been used to transfer knowledge in relation to new cane varieties and more productive means of producing sugarcane, are now being turned towards encouraging producers towards environmentally innovative agricultural practices. The degree to which scientific research and development, coupled with traditional methods of 'technology transfer' has been successful in promoting the adoption of environmental innovations is a topic that members of the sugar industry and the wider community have increasingly called into question. The adoption of environmental innovations has not been readily discernible at a ground level and has led to a belief that the extent of take-up of environmentally innovative canegrowing practices has been quite limited.

Scientific organisations involved with the sugar industry had expected that the adoption of new technology would relate in some way to the producer's age, level of education, years of experience or other 'personal' or demographic characteristics. Furthermore, the perceived low rate of adoption led industry personnel to believe that established methods of research and extension no longer had the support or confidence of sugarcane growers. To the contrary, the research for this thesis has found that growers do hold traditional methods of extension in high regard. This is particularly so in the case of advice received from the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations (BSES), the oldest and most established research, development and extension agency in the sugar industry.

This thesis is substantially based upon a 'materialist' premise and argues that knowledge in relation to innovative canegrowing practices is both produced and diffused through social relationships and social practices. A sociological approach, which brings the 'materiality' of human existence to the forefront of analysis, is used to argue that scientific and lay forms of knowledge are produced through the actions of and interactions between human subjects.

The research indicates that the adoption of environmentally innovative canegrowing practices is quite widespread but in the main does not bear sufficiently strong significant relationships to grower's personal (demographic) characteristics or socio-economic variables such as the size, productivity or profitability of the canegrowing enterprise. Moreover, while significant relationships have been found between adoption and various 'socio-cultural' variables such as 'group involvement', 'sources of information', 'attitudes to chemical usage' and 'attitudes to the current state of the industry', the relationships are also trivial in accounting for variance in the adoption variables.

Furthermore, while practices are assumed to be applicable across the sugar industry, adoption is found to be influenced by factors peculiar to local canegrowing areas. The research undertaken highlights the fact that activities, which occur at the farm level are imbued with a cultural complexity that goes beyond - the mere production of agricultural commodities for the sake of accumulation of an economic surplus.

It is apparent that a range of factors influence the extent to which environmentally innovative agricultural practices are adopted in the sugar industry. While demographic and farm characteristics go some way towards accounting for the adoption of environmental innovations in the sugar industry, the social and socio-cultural conditions under which growers operate must also be taken into consideration.