CSIRO Land and Water's Griffith Laboratory is the home to rural sciences in the field of irrigation systems.

Griffith, NSW (Griffith Laboratory)

CSIRO’s facility in Griffith, New South Wales, has a well-deserved international reputation in irrigation research.

• 30 August 2010

• History
• Facilities and staff

History

The CSIRO research laboratory at Griffith was established in 1924 and is now also the home of Murrumbidgee Irrigation Ltd [external link], the irrigation water supplier for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA). This is a significant partnership that allows a close interaction between research and industry.

The laboratory has a long-established national and international reputation in irrigation and soils research. The research is focused on improving the productivity, profitability and sustainability of irrigated regions. This includes:

• increased irrigation water use productivity through improved irrigation systems and irrigation management tools
• improved drainage water management through quantity and quality control measures
• improved soils through innovative management of organic matter including biochars and wastewaters
• assessment of green house gases from irrigated cropping.

The regional location in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation area is ideal for developing research solutions to the problems that threaten the sustainability of irrigated agriculture.

Solutions developed locally are then adapted and applied in other regions of Australia and internationally, such as countries in India, Pakistan, China, Cambodia and Iraq.

The Griffith laboratory hosts a group of scientists that have unique skills in research associated with irrigated agriculture. They have played a major role in the recent Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Irrigation Futures and are key contributors to the CSIRO Sustainable Agriculture Flagship.

Irrigation research field day

Key outcomes of recent research are:

• innovative use of  information technology (IT) to provide irrigation management support to farmers
• remote sensing to determine crop water use in irrigated agriculture
• drainage water management guidelines
• pesticide management guidelines
• techniques and guidelines for  the re-use of sewage and rural industry wastewaters
• assessment of the opportunities for biochar in an irrigated region
• unique facilities for measurement of green house gases under irrigated conditions.

Facilities and staff

The current staff have a broad mix of skills appropriate to researching the sustainability of irrigated farming. They have specialist skills in crop water use, crop modelling, irrigation management, irrigation productivity, drainage management, water quality, wastewater/saline water reuse, electronics/IT and soil chemistry/physics.

In addition there are postgraduate students and  international visitors adding to the pool of skills and experience. 

The laboratory has state of the art facilities and equipment to measure water quality/quantity, crop water use, soil qualities and greenhouse gases.
These include:

• 32 core weighing lysimeter facility with equipment to measure greenhouse gas emissions
• water quality, pesticides, salinity and soils laboratory with cool room and controlled temperature facilities
• Irrigation Remote Sensing Field Laboratory (IRSFL) – thermal camera, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and infrared (IR) sensing platforms with stationary or mapping capabilities
• Irrigation Water Monitoring Field Laboratory (IWMFL) – Mace, Agriflow and Sontek flow monitoring equipment and weather and crop water flux recording
• Customised Irrigation Electronic’s Workshop (CIEW) – specialised manufacturing/prototyping facility for environmental sensing
• Agricultural reference weather station networks.

The laboratory also has an on-site accommodation centre for the use of collaborators and visitors.

Read more about Irrigation.