Tools and Calculators
The tools provided on this website are easy to use, simple calculators and keys to determining potential constraints to production. The information and links provided should be viewed as a first step to seeking more specific information suitable to on-farm paddock decisions regarding soil management. Your local agronomists, consultants and government agencies are best able to discuss site specific solutions.
On-site Tools
Soil diagnostic tree
Is your paddock or parts of your paddock showing poor crop growth and yield? Has it reached its water limited yield potential? To find out use this tool to determine your water use efficiency to benchmark your yield performance and maintain records for each paddock. If your paddock is not yielding as well as it might, consider whether this is due to poor agronomy, disease, insect pests, nematodes, herbicide damage, weeds, frost damage or other extreme climatic events. If these are not the cause, your soil may be limiting plant growth. Use the decision tree below to help identify potential soil constraints.
Water use efficiency calculator
Plant production is maximised where there are no significant constraints to production and the use of available water (growing season, stored and irrigation) is optimised. For wheat production, the ultimate goal is to produce 20 kilograms of grain for every millimetre of water that is available to the crop. There is considerable variation in achieving this benchmark due to regional climatic and soil differences - nevertheless it provides a goal against which growers can measure their annual performance in and is useful for identifying paddocks not performing as well as they might.
Use this tool to determine your water use efficiency and benchmark your yield performance.
Carbon calculator
Rapid increases in soil carbon have in the past been reported due to the adoption of various soil management strategies such as tillage practice. Growing interest in the capacity of agricultural soils to store carbon and the opportunity for carbon trading suggests there is a need to predict possible increases in soil carbon through increased crop returns.
Use this tool to provide a very simplistic calculation to determine the amount of extra plant biomass that would be required to increase soil carbon by a given value.
NOTE: This calculator presents only the value required to increase carbon over a single year. Divide this value by the number of years required to provide a rough estimate of increases required over longer time periods (i.e. Divide by 10 to calculate the extra plant biomass required to increase soil carbon by 0.5% over a 10 year time frame).
Off-site Tools
Yield Prophet®
An on-line crop production model designed to provide grain growers with real-time information about the crop during growth. To assist in management decisions, growers enter inputs at any time during the season to generate reports of projected yield outcomes showing the impact of crop type and variety, sowing time, nitrogen fertiliser and irrigation
Wheat Yield calculator (Southern/Western Australia)
Grain cropping in southern Australia is entirely dependent on the occurrence and quantity of annual rain, and in most cases this is the major yield limiting factor. This calculator is based on research by French and Schultz (1984) and estimates what rainfall limited yield will be in a season. In this case, available water is the equivalent of 30% rainfall received between January and March plus 100% of rainfall during the growing season (April – October), with losses estimated at 30% of Apr-Oct rainfall. It is assumed that every millimetre of available water will produce 20kg of wheat per hectare.
Green manure calculator
The green manure calculator provides a comparison of relative benefits between a green manure phase and a grain crop within a defined rotational sequence. Results provide an indication of economic costs and benefits based on variable inputs.
Value of stubble retention calculator
The benefits of burning stubble or retaining stubble are difficult to quantify. While stubble burning can aid in the removal of weed seeds and decrease problems associated with too much stubble during seeding, retaining stubble increases the labile carbon fraction and microbial biomass. This calculator was developed in an effort to quantify the economic worth of each management option and is based on data from the long term trial at Merredin Research Station (DAFWA).
Lime Comparison calculator
The lime cost calculator allows you to compare the total cost (lime, freight and spreading) per hectare for the equivalent of 100% neutralising value (NV) of lime. Using published values* it discounts the NV to account for the reduced effect of larger particle sizes which reduce the short term capacity of the lime to change the soil pH.
Controlled traffic calculator
The decision to adopt controlled traffic farming (CTF) is a difficult one as it generally involves a significant capital outlay and small reduction in total cropping area. This management strategy aims to alleviate the effects of traffic related soil compaction by restricting machinery movements to designated tramlines. In doing this, farmers are limited to specific types of machinery all based on identical wheel widths. On soil types susceptible to compaction, CTF has the potential to markedly improved yields through improved rooting depth and access to water..
Cotton Greenhouse Gas Calculator
Calculator for estimating greenhouse gas emissions in the cotton industry in NSW and Queensland (Source: Cotton Catchment Communities CRC).
CottonLOGIC Water Quality Calculator
This simple web tool can be used to calculate the salinity (EC), Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR) and pH when water sources are mixed together to provide irrigation water (Source: Cotton Catchment Communities CRC; Cottonlogic Tools on the Web)