Optimising nutrition for productive and sustainable farm forestry systems

With the closure of North Queensland rainforests to logging following World Heritage Listing, timber plantations are being established on degraded and other agricultural land. Experimental evidence indicates that current fertiliser regimes produce suboptimal growth in many species, particularly on the less fertile soils. Further there is public concern about the possibility of fertilisers in agricultural runoff having adverse effects on the downstream environment. Added to this, fertilisers are a significant economic cost to the landowner that affects returns from farm forestry enterprises.