PhD Scholarship: An economic and agronomic assessment of Nitrogen Use Efficiency and the factors influencing it

Recently sugar industry has changed dramatically, with consolidation into a smaller number of large farms and adoption of new technologies and management practices. Much of this has also applied to nitrogen management, with the development of the Six Easy Steps being one such example. With this in mind, it is important to examine how nitrogen management has been impacted by these changes as the industry transitions and encourages growers to adopt practices for maximising Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE).

Given that growers need to consider agronomic, financial and business factors when making decisions, we propose an analysis that will consider all of these factors to gain insight into what is driving change in nitrogen management within the Australian sugarcane industry. Particular attention will be given to the increasing size of sugarcane farms the sector, and how these changes have affected nitrogen management.

• Develop an improved understanding of the factors that have historically driven changes in nitrogen management within the Australian sugarcane industry
• Identify which on-farm factors are leading to the greatest increases in efficient nitrogen management
• Provide insight into future trends of nitrogen management
• Calculation of Nutrient Budgets and Nutrient use efficiency metrics, along with theoretical optimums for comparison
• Analysis of Farm Management approaches which explain any variance discovered in the previous phase
• Generation of a Thesis based on the cumulative results of the whole project.