PARTICIPATORY IRRIGATION RESEARCH AND SCHEDULING IN THE ORD: EXTENSION

SUGARCANE production in the Ord is now nearly 10 years old. Agricultural extension activities started shortly after the inception of the industry. The new industry on the Ord irrigation scheme offered a chance to look at crop water use from scratch as well as to test new concepts for participatory action research (PAR). The experience gained from research and extension of irrigation technology in the Ord could benefit older schemes such as the Burdekin. This paper provides a review of the research-extension-grower interaction that guided the research and led to the development and adoption of a web-based scheduling system. A companion paper deals with the irrigation research conducted in the Ord since 1996. Irrigation scheduling has been adopted in the Ord where it might be expected to be of least value compared to high value crops in areas of water scarcity. The reasons for the success are considered to be regular involvement of the Ord growers in the basic and applied research, obtaining agreement from growers for future stages of research, demonstration of scheduling options on-farm with key growers, rapid response by the research team to needs of the extension officer and growers, and development of a web system with a rapid response time, simple inputs and a simple presentation.