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Ivan Kennedy is 'Cotton Researcher' of the year - CSD
01 Mar '06
3 min read
Cotton Seed Distributors Ltd (CSD) informed that Ivan Kennedy, Professor in Agricultural & Environmental Chemistry, University of Sydney was awarded the 2005 ACGRA Australian Cotton Researcher of the Year Award, sponsored by CSD.
Professor Kennedy's work has involved pesticide movement, forming the basis for the cotton industry's Best Management Practice (BMP) program. He has also been involved in evaluating the environmental benefits of Roundup Ready cotton, risk classification of gin trash and currently looking at the environmental benefits of on-farm wetlands.
Ivan, you must have been pleased with that result?
Very pleased indeed. I think it is one of the Awards that has most meaning of all because it is something that has happened in the real world and it shows that our work has actually had some significance in the cotton industry particularly.
Looking back at some of your achievements; your early work on pesticide movement and identifying where some of the major risks lay form the basis of what we now call the Best Management Practice program adopted throughout the industry. That must be another big positive?
Yes it was. From a scientific point of view it was interesting to learn how a chemical like endosulfan moved around. We were surprised when we found that so much of it goes off as a vapour (about 60%). That can happen over the first week after application.
But what was really important was to understand how much was moving in runoff; being carried on sediment, how much was also drifting from cotton fields because in these areas it was possible to bring in management practices which would reduce the impact of endosulfan as a model chemical. We used it as a model on the environment at large and the Best Management Practices program traded directly on those results in terms of recommendations to farmers about methods of spraying and also ways to engineer the farms' water movement and all of that.
Professor Kennedy's work has involved pesticide movement, forming the basis for the cotton industry's Best Management Practice (BMP) program. He has also been involved in evaluating the environmental benefits of Roundup Ready cotton, risk classification of gin trash and currently looking at the environmental benefits of on-farm wetlands.
Ivan, you must have been pleased with that result?
Very pleased indeed. I think it is one of the Awards that has most meaning of all because it is something that has happened in the real world and it shows that our work has actually had some significance in the cotton industry particularly.
Looking back at some of your achievements; your early work on pesticide movement and identifying where some of the major risks lay form the basis of what we now call the Best Management Practice program adopted throughout the industry. That must be another big positive?
Yes it was. From a scientific point of view it was interesting to learn how a chemical like endosulfan moved around. We were surprised when we found that so much of it goes off as a vapour (about 60%). That can happen over the first week after application.
But what was really important was to understand how much was moving in runoff; being carried on sediment, how much was also drifting from cotton fields because in these areas it was possible to bring in management practices which would reduce the impact of endosulfan as a model chemical. We used it as a model on the environment at large and the Best Management Practices program traded directly on those results in terms of recommendations to farmers about methods of spraying and also ways to engineer the farms' water movement and all of that.
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