List of articles with the category Technical Report

A report on developing biocontrol agents for 10 weeds of importance in Australia, including five Weeds of National Significance (WoNS): cabomba, Sagittaria, prickly acacia, silverleaf nightshade and African boxthorn. Fleabane and sowthistle are major weeds of cropping land while mother-of-millions and giant rat’s tail grass impact grazing land. Ox-eye daisy is becoming a serious environmental weed on crown land.

This CSIRO report for WWF Australia explores the environmental and agricultural impacts of invasive garden plants in Australia.

Biocontrol often forms a vital component of integrated weed management strategies and is a proven approach in the Australian context. Close to 40% of biocontrol programs have been considered successful, delivering an overall benefit-cost ratio of 23:1.

This project aimed to realise significant productivity and profitability improvements for primary producers by focusing on one piece of the national weed management puzzle – biological control, a measure which has a demonstrated collective national return on investment of at least 23:1.

This study found 281 plants currently available in Australian nurseries present a significant risk to Australia’s grazing industries should they escape from Australian gardens and naturalise. Of these plants, one third are toxic and may harm, or even kill, livestock while almost all have been commercially available in Australia for many years.

Weeds continue to emerge in the Australian context, but understanding how they spread is poorly understood. This project assesses the threats and risks of weed sources as well as pathways of spread and the sensitivity of the invaded environment.

Biological invasions are a major threat to Australia. Information on alien flora in Australia is collated independently by different jurisdictions, which has led to inconsistencies at the national level, hampering efficient management. The Alien Flora of Australia (AFA) is an Australian first: a nationally unified dataset that harmonises different information sources.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) legislates a review of the state of the Australian environment every 5 years. Australia state of the environment 2021 (SoE 2021) assesses the changing condition of our natural environment across 12 themes: air quality, Antarctica, biodiversity, climate, coasts, extreme events, heritage, Indigenous, inland water, land, marine and urban.

The SoE is designed to:

– help shape strategy, policy and action
– influence behaviours of individuals, communities and businesses
– assist in assessing our actions as stewards of the Australian environment.

The 2021 report combines scientific, traditional and local knowledge to provide a rigorous, peer‑reviewed assessment of every aspect of the environment.

The Commonwealth of Australia owns the copyright in all material produced by the Department. Australia State of the Environment 2021 is licenced by the Commonwealth of Australia for use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence with the exception of the Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the logo of the agency responsible for publishing the report and some content supplied by third parties. For licence conditions see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

National coordination of weeds data is a priority for all levels of government in Australia and is established in national policy documents such as the Australian Weeds Strategy (AWS) 2017–2027, the Intergovernmental Agreement on Biosecurity (IGAB), and the national strategies for Weeds of National Significance (WoNS). Collaboration through data sharing can assist weed managers to more effectively allocate resources, assess effectiveness of investments, and improve management outcomes.
The objective of the national weeds data collection survey was to understand the status of weeds data collection and sharing between stakeholders, and identify opportunities for data coordination at a national level.
Authors: Katherina Ng, Bo Raphael, Luke Maloney, Jessica Evans and Sandra Parsons. Research by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences. Research report 21.05 April 2021

This project aimed to develop biocontrol agents for the control of ten weeds of importance in Australia. Five of these weeds are Weeds of National Significance (WoNS): cabomba, Sagittaria, prickly acacia, silverleaf nightshade and African boxthorn. Fleabane and sowthistle have become major weeds of cropping land while mother-of-millions and giant rat’s tail grass impact on grazing land. The final weed, ox-eye daisy is becoming a serious environmental weed in crown land.

The aim of this report by S Csurhes and R Edwards was to list and describe non-indigenous terrestrial and aquatic plant species considered to have the following attributes – represent a threat to native terrestrial or aquatic plant communities, a localised distribution and vulnerable to eradication (including species that only exist as cultivated specimens).

This report reviews existing work in community weed management, examining hours, money spent, weed control methods used, regions covered and geographic locations. It also identifies the advantages and limitations of using community groups for environmental weed management. It is interesting to note that the most successful community groups to date are those that receive appropriate support from the local agency with which they are working. It is critical for government agencies to provide experienced personnel to train and support groups that are supplying their time to control environmental weeds, an often tedious job.

Cover of Community involvement in off-reserve and on-reserve management of environmental weeds
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This report by R.J. Adair & R.H.Groves is a review and development of a methodology.

The primary aim of this technical bulletin by By J.E. Ireson, J.T. Davies, D.A. Friend, R.J. Holloway, W.S. Chatterton, E.I. Van Putten and R.E.C. McFadyen was to provide a revised assessment of the cost of weeds to Tasmanian pastures and field crops as well as identifying the weeds that are having the most significant impact on Tasmanian agriculture. It also reviews the current status of all weed biological control programs that have been conducted in Tasmania against some of the major weeds and provides a case study of the successful biological control program on ragwort. The document should serve as a useful reference for those involved in weed control both within the state and nationally.

This report by by Aaron Coutts-Smith and Paul Downey (NSW Pest Management Unit, Parks and Wildlife Division Department of Environment and Conservation) looks at the biodiversity impacts of weeds on the natural environment.

Guides by Di Carpenter and Annabel Bowcher for the management of weeds in winter pulse crops, looking at the whole farm business and developing strategies involving a wide range of techniques. These publications provides an overview of all aspects of managing weeds during the pulse phase of crop rotation, including what pulse species to choose, weed impacts on pulse production, problem weed species by state, optimisation of the competitive ability of pulses against weed species and weed management using an integrated approach drawn from the suite of available chemical and cultural control methods.

This peer-reviewed publication edited by H Spafford Jacob and DT Briese contains the proceedings from the Weeds CRC Biological Control of Weeds Symposium held in Perth on September 13, 2002.

This report by the Centre for International Economics highlights the CRC’s achievements up until 2001 and the avenues through which the CRC’s work will reduce weed costs over the longer term.

This model’s development by David Vere, Garry Griffith and Randall Jones closely follows the structural modelling procedures previously adopted in NSW Agriculture and represents an aggregation of that research into a single entity.

This paper by DT Vere, RE Jones and GR Griffith presents a brief review of the methodology of production systems modelling and provides details of the farm and industry modelling methods adopted in the construction of the integrated models. Examples of the application of this modelling system are presented.

This report convened by RH Groves, appendix compiled by JR Hosking assigns dates to weed incursions and naturalisations wherever known.

This paper by by Randall Jones, Yohannes Alemseged, Richard Medd and David Vere reports on an analysis of the costs of weeds in Australian annual winter cropping systems.