FWPA data insights for healthy & productive plantations

Friday 23 Aug 2024

 
Three recently completed, FWPA-funded projects, using data spanning 30 years in Australian forestry plantations, have resulted in actionable recommendations and guidance for improving productivity, profitability and health of plantation forests. 

Reports
  1. The Softwood Nutrition Project looked to increase confidence in the use of fertiliser by providing reliable predictions of plantation response.
  2. The Hardwood Nutrition Project encompassed a network of trials across southern Australia, similarly, looking to provide predictability and guidance around fertiliser response and usage to increase productivity.
  3. The Optimising Productivity – Hardwood Yield Gap Project looked at the historic gaps between potential hardwood plantation yield and productivity in southern Australia, compared to actual yields.
Project findings

Findings have provided insight into nutrition and environmental factors that limit plantation productivity. Existing tools such as ProFert, a fertiliser decision support tool, have been updated and enhanced with this long-term data and are providing immediate value to the industry. 

“Consultation with our grower members revealed a clear need and appetite for significantly increased investment in plantation nutrition – both through RD&E and capacity building”, said  Jodie Mason, FWPA’s Head of Forest Research. “Investing in better calibration of decision support tools such as ProFert goes some way to bridging the gap left as industry experts retire. Some of our new nutrition and physiological modelling projects also have a stronger focus on capacity building to strengthen expertise.” 

The three projects presented here were developed to support increasing productivity from Australia’s plantation estate, which has remained static or in decline, in terms of area, for the past decade. 

“There is a strong desire within the industry for increased output to keep in-line with increased demand,” said lead researcher and McGrath Forestry Services Principal, John McGrath. “Land in Australia, especially high-quality land, is very expensive. That means the best option for foresters is to make sure they get the best out of the land they currently have.” 

The importance of long-term data and insights 

“One thing all three projects have done is to create new insights from pre-existing historical data,” John McGrath said. “We’ve taken the results of nutrition and silvicultural trials conducted across Australia from as far back as 30 years. So, while our involvement in these three relatively short-term projects has been recent, in many ways the projects themselves have been in development for much longer.” 

“Obviously, the climate has a massive influence on the growth rate of trees, but also the scale of their response to fertiliser and nutrition management. That interaction between the environment and the management of the plantations has been a core theme throughout all three projects.” 

The research teams also recognised that climate change is an important consideration, particularly considering rotations in softwood plantations can be 30 or 40 years. So, response to fertiliser is likely to change over long rotations alongside the changing climate. 

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Source: FWPA


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