 see our screen presentation effectively? Yes, you see it. Okay, very good. So, yeah, so I'm Jason and I have been working in Vietnam since 2006 in collaboration with friends at Canto University. I have worked there on a range of different basically saw-related projects, but firstly with ACR there on a rice shrimp project looking at sustainability of the rice shrimp system and then that led on to what we call the focus project, which is farmer options for crops under saline conditions. And with me, I have Brooke, who is postdoc on that project. Hi everyone. I also have worked in Vietnam for a while, but started in 2015 as part of my undergraduate and I have progressed through after getting my PhD and now work full-time on this focus project and interested in soil, plant, sort of microbial interactions. So it's a great, great space to explore this. Right, yeah, so, yeah, the project is funded by ACR and it's led in Australia by us at Charleston University and our in-country lead is Canto University. So, just as a brief intro, of course the Delta in Vietnam is hugely important to the country. It's about 12% of the area, a very flat area and so it is all pretty much less than four metres above sea level except for a few hills or what the locals call mountains. But yeah, so a lot of it's even less than two metres above sea level. Agriculture is hugely important to the economy in the Delta with 80% of the jobs associated with agriculture in some way. And the Delta produces over 50% of the country's rice production and a lot of that is exported as well. So the economic value is quite large. So the food bowl of Vietnam is the Delta. However, over the recent years, there's been competition for the water that's coming down through the Mekong River. So with upstream water use and damming, we've had, due to climate change, drought is a lot more regular now and even the rainfall patterns have been disrupted. So 10 years ago, the dry and wet season were very set whereas now they're quite variable and unpredictable, which causes problems of course to the farming, the cropping systems. Seed level rise is an issue being close to the equator and so the seawater rise has been recorded as being about 12 to 14 millimetres per year. And of course, as the seawater rises, the salt water starts coming up through the canal and river system. And so in this diagram in the map here, you can see that there's lines that show the extent of salinity coming through into the Delta inland upstream up canals and salinising the land. And so you can kind of see there in 2010, there's around the coastal areas or pericostal areas, 2016 was a rather large drought effect and salinity really started to impact rice crops and farmers were in a lot of trouble because they never experienced this before in some areas because it had moved so far inland. And you can see there in 2020 it happened again and even further in some areas. And so you literally have a situation where people who have been able to farm a certain way for decades all of a sudden were starting to be impacted by this seawater rise and the salt water intrusion coming up the canal system. And of course, their response once that happened was okay, I can't irrigate from the river anymore because it's saline so I'll ground water pump instead. And of course, removing water from a Delta system makes the land subsidence worse. And so whilst the seawater rise is that 12 to 14 millimeters per year, land subsidence is around 40 millimeters per year. And so the net effect of that of course is around 50 millimeters a year in a system where you are two meters above sea level. So that's like that's pretty, that's a bad situation. And that's the situation that we're working in. And of course, the problem is that that salinity and the effect of the drought basically have hundreds of thousands of hectares impacted by salt and by lack of water. And you have all that loss of production, loss of farm income and impact on communities, rural communities. So that's our problem. And of course, the worst of this situation, the worst of the salt water intrusion and the drought occurs in the dry season. So in a lot of areas through the Delta, they'll grow three crops a rise a year. And our problem is largely in this early dry season situation. And so it's this third rice crop that gets often will get killed by the salinity. But even in areas where they grow two rice crops, they stretch that out such that that second rice crop is still susceptible in some years to impacts by salt. So what we're looking at is alternatives to rice in this dry season period. And the farmers that we work with and the darts of the Department of Agricultural and Rural Development, government agencies that we work with, they all say you can teach us to grow new crops, we can use new soil techniques. But the crop has to be valuable. It has to have a stronger market value than rice because we can grow more rice and the farmers will still be poor. So the alternative has to be a marketable, profitable crop. And so we focus on that as well. So in looking at these alternative crops, we look at the crop, but also the soil management and the agricultural management of the field to be able to grow those crops. So we've kind of got the biophysical, the crop, the selection of the crop species and also variety, and then the soil management that supports that crop. And that sort of thing, Brooke, we'll go into more detail, but we're talking about raised beds to minimize the effects of water logging, mulches to minimize evaporation and decrease the effects of salinity, for example. And then of course, there's nutrition on top of that. We are looking at the socioeconomic value chain sort of market analysis. So if we grow these crops, is there a market for them? What are those markets? What are the barriers to adoption of those crops within the supply chain? So we're examining those within the project. We need to have a really good understanding of how salinity of the soil and the waterways changes through time and space. And so if you look through the literature and online, you'll see maps of the delta that change, that shows salinity, but often they're created by monitoring points in the waterways and not actually measuring salt in soil or salinity in soil. And so we're looking at doing that by a range of different mechanisms. And so we have a team of people who actually measure salinity in soil and also the waterways, but we also are doing it with remote sensing as well, because we have a really strong GIS team that's capable of doing that sort of stuff for us. And so the value of doing that is we can understand what can we grow? Where can we grow it and under what conditions? And then with that spatial temporal mapping, we actually can match up where you're going to get a large enough scale of land to support those new crops to maybe then inform government to say, look, you can support private industry here or change policy to create incentives for businesses to come in and fill this niche part of the supply chain to enable uptake of this alternative crop and give it a value. And then the fourth part is we're looking at the role of gender in the whole process from knowledge creation in the research team through to the extension to growers, the uptake on farm, and also within supply chains as well. Understanding that it's a really rapidly moving space and often that impacts genders differently. And so we need to just understand what we're dealing with there and how can we help offset some of the changes that are going to be occurring. So for the purpose of this presentation, we'll focus on the biophysical aspect of the project. And that comes down to looking at alternative crops to rice to suit this dry season period. So when we first started out, we had to make a criteria that we could identify crops that could be suitable. To start with, it was saline tolerant crops. So obviously, towards the end of the dry season, the saline intrusion is really gets quite high and soil salinisation is the worst during that later reproductive phase. So salt tolerant crops that can grow and reproduce and then create a profitable yield was the criteria we looked at. Water use efficient crops or crops that used lower amounts of water to complete their life cycle was something that was really important. You can get crops that are salt tolerant, but use a lot of water and in a system where there's fresh water scarcity, it's just not suitable. There's a risk, there's a higher risk of failure. We also needed crops that could fit the climate of the Mekong Delta in that dry season. The temperatures can get to 35 degrees. We get these variable, very low rainfall patterns, you're relying on irrigation. So these sort of crops that fit there, not a crop that's a cold tolerant sort of crop. They had to be able to work in with the available labour that exists in these small holder farms. There are some crops that can fit both the salt tolerant and water use efficient criteria, but require great amounts of manual labour and that just doesn't work in the system. So finding something that we can adapt with the available mechanisation and tools available to farmers. And most of all, as Jason said, it had to be something that is profitable at the end of the day for the farmers because they need a yield to sell at market, otherwise there's no point in investing in this. So we sort of based our crop selection off these criteria, came up with a few different species to test and understanding that there will always be more species. We can't test them all, but we can look at the adoption protocols and practices of how that occurs. So we did a range of glasshouse and greenhouse trials both in Australia and Vietnam. And these helped us sort of work out the salinity and drought or water use screening of different species, as well as once we identified species, the varieties available in Vietnam that could be best suited to those perhaps different spatial areas. There may be areas that are saline affected, but has lots of water. And there are varieties that suit that. Alternatively, there are areas of the delta that have less saline intrusion, but water is an issue. So you sort of suit varieties to those areas. We also, yes, did water use efficiency sort of screening. And through all of those, we did things like measuring plants or parameters, lots of different leaf indexes, proleins, yields, biomasses, roots, nodules, all those sorts of things. From here, the range of trials that we did, it helped us establish what we could use in the field. And so some of the crops we've trialled, cowpea, there's a legume, beetroot, watermelon, maize, quinoa, we've done a range of different crops. And we utilize the information from the glasshouse and greenhouse trials and to work out where they are best suited in the delta. We have trials across, as a transect across the delta, starting in Sok Trang, which is quite close to the coast, where saline intrusion is the worst, all the way up to Aang Yang, where it's a broader scale cropping systems. Freshwater scarcity is more of an issue rather than saline intrusion. So there's an adoption of different species there. We have these dry season trials, and then it goes back into rice cropping after we're finished. And we are looking at both the performance of our alternative species and then things like the impacts of that on rice afterwards, as well as, you know, different varieties, where they suit, where they're best located. So with those field trials, we've got the species that we've selected. But we've also looked at different management practices that we can use to enhance and optimize the growth of these alternative crops. We use a soil monitoring moisture device called chameleon soil moisture sensors. And these are Australian made, and I'll go into detail in the next slide. But we help farmers understand irrigation schedules. They're familiar with growing rice, which is obviously flood irrigation. These upland crops, different water requirements, we can make more efficient water decisions. And so we're using these tools to test those thresholds there. Rice straw mulching, different mulching trials. We're doing rate trials, combinations with things like compost and biochar chameleon, so monitoring irrigation with mulch. So it's just integrating these different management practices in things like raised beds, as you can see in one of the pictures up the top there. So chameleons are a pretty cool device. They are developed originally by CSI Roe in Australia, and now they're sold through the Virtual Irrigation Company Academy, which is a non-for-profit organization. They measure soil moisture through soil tension, and the beauty about this is rather than interpreting something that could be complex to a farmer, is in reading in kilopascals, it comes up with a traffic light system to indicate the level of soil moisture that's there. And this makes it really easy to use. It provides real-time data back to the farmer, and it's relatively cheap compared to things like tensiometers. They are, however, limited by quite high levels of salinity, and we're working to see where those sort of thresholds exist and how they fit in with our system. So the traffic light system, just very quickly, blue, it's been calibrated to mean you've got a soil tension between zero and minus 22 kilopascals, so your soil is essentially wet, you don't need to irrigate it. Green is moist, and once a farmer sees the red lights come up, they know they have to irrigate. You can have multiple different layers, so that each light corresponds to its own sensor, and that sensor can be put at different depths, so you could have zero to five, five to 10, 10 to 15 centimetres, or we use them spatially because we've got shallow, rooted species. We might use them between treatments to determine what irrigation is happening there. So it's a really useful tool for farmer engagement and is an educational tool, but also a research tool for us. So there is a chameleon card version, which is a cheaper method of it, but it doesn't log data like the Wi-Fi one does. So you can see a farmer here in Vietnam, I think the video will play the lights flashing, so he attaches the wire and then it will indicate, I think, a green light there, so hopefully he doesn't go and irrigate that crop, but yeah, super, super easy to use. So that's what we're sort of utilising in our field trials. Yeah, and without that intervention, the farmer behaviour that's been observed is they irrigate every day because they think they have to, and they've got no other information to say that they, that's not a good idea, but we've used the chameleons to show, to demonstrate that actually you don't need to irrigate every day. Yeah, so when, this is just an example of sort of a field trial experiment we've got set up, and we have what we call the farmer practice, which is that irrigating every day or whatever they perceive as their ideal irrigation, and what we've found is it follows something along the lines of what they would do with rice, and then we compare that to our treatments of a chameleon with no straw and then various rates of straw mulch to see what water savings we can get. And it's been, we've done this over a few years now, and the results are really consistent and exciting. We have found, and so we'll report beetroot or red beets, whatever you'd like to call it. This is just some from a recent trial that we did. And along the y-axis, you can see the water applied, so that's how much water over the growing season that this trial used. And we used farmers in this, so we're engaging the farmers in the field trials and getting sort of buy-in there. We can see your first column is a chameleon with no mulch. And so that was, you know, you're irrigating based off what the chameleon says, but you don't have any mulch. The next one is the same, it's chameleon, but you've got seven tonnes of rustraw there, and that's then compared to a farmer's irrigation with 10 tonnes of mulch. So more mulch than the chameleon one. Yeah, so our seven tonne was something that we came up with with our experiment, sort of demonstrated that seven tonnes was the optimal, optimal rate for rustraw mulch, whereas the farmers were doing 10 tonnes their standard practice. So that's why that, that's why that rate is different. Bit of a comparison. We're trying to also show there's efficiencies, hopefully through less labour and straw and use like that. And this was, this was really cool because we had, here's our beetroot yield in tonnes per hectare. And you can see mulching makes a huge difference. So chameleon, no mulch, it's significantly less yield. But the chameleon with seven tonnes per hectare and then the farmer irrigation with 10 tonnes, there was no yield difference. So the take home message is that you can use less water and less straw if you use a chameleon and you get the same yield. And we've had this, not just across with beetroot, we've had it with maize, watermelon. We're extending that now into you know, cowpea and quinoa. So it's exciting to show the farmers these benefits. They don't have to water every day. You don't have to put on as much straw, but you still get, you know, the same yields that you would if you used that much water and that much mulch. So, so this is, this is really, it's just a feel good moment when you see this data. So what we know from, from where we are at this point in the project is that we have found alternative crops work. And as I mentioned before, you know, people approach us all the time with different crops, you know, have you tried this? Have you tried that? We're not there to find the one crop that will save everything. It's the principle of how we implement and adopt new crops and the criteria that we need to focus on and how we can work that into a system that's been predominantly rice based for many, many years. So we've grown these crops, novel crops in areas that have not seen alternative crops and they work, which is good to know. And they're profitable. Profitable. Yeah. Yeah. Be true. I don't have the quote here, but we interviewed this farmer in the picture and he made, I think, 27 million dong per 1000 meter squared compared to rice, which was two or 3000. So significant increases in farm income, which is fantastic. And I think the next point you get that water saving, if you combine some management practices to help optimise those crops, there will be, there's many other things that you can do, but these are two achievable and accessible tools for farmers. They have rice straw, chameleons are relatively cheap. We're looking at ways we can, you know, get more of these tools out to farmers or increase your awareness of irrigation. The seven ton mulch seems to be the magic number consistently throughout our trials. 10 tons, it either, you know, it doesn't improve yield or improve anything. So that's a good threshold to know. And we sort of work from that now. It's better than two and a half tons, but seven tons is no better than 10. So that's, that's some useful to know. And we have found that 25% saving in labour, and that would be through irrigation, like not having to irrigate daily. You can get that back to a household and we have interviews where farmers have said that they now have more time to take their grandchildren to school and things like that. So there's social benefits as well, as well as 25% savings in fuel. And that's from running pumps and things like that. So there are all these sort of other benefits to the alternative crops and the management practices that we're looking at. However, there are still, of course, things that we still need to know and need to find these out. And these are research questions of interest. Timing being a big one. So the finding those sowing windows where we avoid abiotic stresses like temperature, the saline intrusion, those sort of water limitations, they are really important into fitting with the cropping calendar of rice that's already there. And that's a really big challenge because one of the effects of the climate change is the unpredictable weather. So in our journey working there in the last few years, we've had the early storm events that have flooded sites and we've had the heat wave effects that kill seedlings, whereas the year before that didn't happen. And when you talk to the farmers, has it been this hot before and they've never seen it this hot before? So things are changing and so that unpredictability is a real issue for us trying to fit these new crops into the system. Yeah. And then, as Jason said, it's fitting them into the system and then fitting them into their cultural practices. So Vietnam has a big holiday in our new year, but it's Tet. And when you speak to farmers or researchers, they say no one will grow crops over that period because they require irrigation daily and everyone takes two weeks off or 10 days. So it's working out, we might have the scientific answer, but it's how that fits into a socio sort of family household dynamic practice and the implications of changing something like that. We have to sort of look into that as well. And then on top of that, it's then optimizing once we've sort of got the timing right and it fits into a cycle that works for the farmers. How can we optimize those plants, alternative crops? Is it fertilizer? Is it, you know, we're looking at soil constraints, those sorts of things. The soil has been growing rice for many years. There's probably micronutrient research, macronutrient. There's a whole gamut of optimization that could go into that to further, in a way, that's low import and high productivity, high profitability for farmers. Those are the sort of questions that we're looking at in the future. And of course, those alternative crops, if they have benefit to the subsequent rice crop, that means that you can wind back the fertilizer inputs, then you change the risk profile because now you don't have so much capital invested in fertilizer, for example. And so if the crop fails, the losses aren't as great. So there's those sort of things to take account of as well. Yeah. So with that, that's a nice little wrap up of our project and our team and fantastic team members in Vietnam who really do a great job of pulling all these field trials and research questions together for us. So it's a great place to work and explore these these big, big picture questions. Thanks for the opportunity to present. Thank you very, very much for this wonderful presentation. I enjoyed it a lot and have a few questions myself, but I will give the floor first to others. Questions, please. Also comments are welcome. Suggestions and Stefan is first. Yeah, no, great presentation and a lot of learning for us in the Asia Mega Delta Initiative. So linking up is really, really useful, valuable, and hope we can do this further going forward together. That's just one comment. But my question is a little bit around the choices that you made, that the initial crops that you tested, did you do some sort of market analysis before? Because you sort of didn't talk about that, that's fine. But just to know, did you do a market? It has been through the market out there, there's a potential there or for the melon or whatever it may be, quinoa, etc. Over? Yes, so we did it as far as we knew that we couldn't do every single crop. And so we grouped them into sort of, you know, cereal types or grain crops, vegetables and did it that way. But what I've learned out of that process is that the scale of operation matters a lot. And so there are some small farms where perhaps some more labor intensive niche, like beetroot or something like that, which they can sell locally at a high price, works for that small farm. Whereas if that was done on a bigger farm, the higher labor requirement, more labor units, all of a sudden that's not economical anymore. Whereas if you move somewhere to a larger scale, then mechanization becomes super important and something like quinoa is viable. Whereas it's not viable on a small farm because, you know, it's, you need to be mechanized to actually make that function. And so so whilst we're doing those, we are doing those supply chain studies, we started with the agronomic to get the ball rolling in that. And now we can refine and probably chase the winners a little bit better, if that makes sense. Yep. And I think matching up existing small markets, household, you know, the growth of vegetables sold on the side of the road, you understand there's a familiar that rarity there. And it's just, as Jason said, matching that to where those smaller communities might exist or if it's broader scale, and you can get harvesters in. Yeah. Thanks. I, my question is actually very similar. So I use my current power to jump the line a bit. Sorry, Mike. How did you come up with the actual crops that you were testing or that you tested in the field? I mean, you showed the requirements and kind of the general framework that they should meet. But there's probably still, I mean, dozens of options available. Did you sit down and brainstorm or did you have like a process for that? Did you ask experts come to university? What was the So we, so we had, we had the literature, we had, you know, what's possible from the literature. We worked very closely and it's my mistake. I have not got that on my final slide there in terms of who's in the team. But the DAB, the Department of Agricultural Rural Development, we actually worked really strongly with the field staff there to hear what they wanted, what they are interested in or what their farmers are interested in. And so, so we, like, I guess, Kiwa we bought, bought in as like that didn't come from Vietnam as an idea. But, but everything else is pretty much that the farmers were interested or the DAB staff have seen it grown somewhere else and wondered, is that possible? And so, so, yeah, it was ground up a lot of the cases. But we had the literature there to sort of feel in, well, this should work and that should work. Or when we didn't want to, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. So if, you know, people have grown tomatoes, then fine, we already know you can do that. And, and just a quick follow up was that, is it general, generally crops that are grown in the Mekong Delta already? Because sometimes you also mentioned new crops. So what's the, the mix between crops that maybe not those farmers, but that were kind of common in the Mekong Delta and completely new ideas? Yeah, the beets roots new and king last new. So, yeah, so they're out there on newbies. But yeah, the, the, how P we were really keen to get a legume in the system. Soybean was recommended from Dard. And we, with our sort of knowledge of the literature, we tested soybean, but knowing that it's only moderate salt tolerance and consequently it failed. So looking, then they're interested in the legume. What can we find that fits that growing calendar? And it's, you know, shorter duration was also a big requirement trying to get something that can get through its reproductive phases and avoid those abiotic stresses. So cow pee was, was great because it's a multi-purpose crop and finding crops that have beyond one benefit, whether it's because it's a legume or it could be used as a forage crop, or it could be harvested as a bean consumed as a vegetable, those sorts of things became appealing. And then the farmers really got on board with that, which is great. So it's sort of a, yeah, you know, suggestions are passed in and we try and optimize what crops might suit that. And if it's some, if there's longer term legacy effects as well, through nitrogen fixation, I mean, what a win for the system. Okay. So, so it's a, it's a mixed methods approach. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mike, you've been very patient. Yeah. Thanks very much. And thank you for a very interesting presentation. My angle comes from the aquatic side, the, the fishy side rather than crops, but of course, recognizing that the, the integrated systems rice fish and other crops fish are of course interesting for Delta environments today. And on another one CG program called ASEAN, we're looking at, among other things, regenerative agriculture, which involves soil health. And sometime back, James Quilty, who you know, from ACIR, asked me and others to evaluate a rice shrimp project, which I think you were also involved with. And that work promoted a Bayesian belief network probability app. So my first question is, is that application still in use and are farmers finding it useful? So I'm not, I'm not sure on the, the uptake of, of the BBN app. I know they were, they were interested. I know they wanted it. It was one of the things that we need this, but I'm not sure how far that got developed after that project ended. But we had it set up. We got it to a point where we had the structure there. It functioned, but like any, any decision support system, it's, it's value improves with data going into it. And so I'm not sure how much has happened since the project ended. Okay. Thank you. And the next question part of the question is, have you come across something called a bio funk tool? It measures soil health by gathering a range of soil properties to give a prediction about soil health. Short answer, no. But so one of the things that we've, we work with the farmers, because we initially started with training programs to train the farmers about salinity as a, as a, because it's such a high risk factor for cropping. And what came out of that was actually they need just soil, soil health training. And so it was amazing what the farmers could tell you about their soil. Just from their observations, like we keep growing rice and the yields keep going down. We keep putting more fertilizer on, but the yields keep going down. But when we grow these alternative crops, everything changes and the next, you know, the next rice crops better. And so they, they put it together and they realize that soil health is really important, but they don't know much about it. And so we've changed our training from salinity training to soil training, soil constraint training. And, and that's, we've done it and you'll have to forgive us for just being Australian people working with Australian farmers and understanding what that's like. We've used the models that we know work with our farmers and took them to Vietnam and the Vietnamese team, like, oh, this isn't going to work. Like no one's interested in this stuff. You won't get farmers engaged in this. We have to, look, trust me, it works. Farmers love this stuff. And we did it. And the farmers engaged and the diet people, oh, we've never seen farmers engage like this, you know, and so farmers are farmers. They, they understand the soil. They understand, like they want to know more about it. If they don't know, they want to learn. And so, so that was, that I don't know the biofund tool. I'm not familiar with it, but anything that it links soil fertility or soil health to a farmer is, is going to work, I think. Yeah. As long as it's hands on. Okay. Two, two quick extra questions. The chameleon tool, what's its lifespan? Good question. It depends where and in what conditions it's being used. The creator of the chameleon is, is called Richard Sturzaker. He's wonderful in, he continues to develop the product and tags feedback from, from a whole world, like range of developing countries that are utilizing the chameleon. He's had chameleon sensors last one cropping season. He's had them last five cropping seasons. So it's, it's finding what parameters affect those and why they would disintegrate quicker. He has work on extra durable sensors that are thicker and he's working on coatings and different things like that to, you know, expand their longevity. We've got to use that. Yeah. But the, the actual scent, the, the computer part of the sensor will, you know, will last for a very long time. It's just the actual sensors that go in the ground that may need replacing and they're, they're very cheap. So. One last question. Have you looked at genetically modified crops for, for, for, for saline resistance? We haven't. No. And, and there would be, you would have to do a bit of work with finding policies and how that matches in the systems. Okay. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. How much are these chameleon sensors, by the way? Can I ask roughly? Yeah. So the card, the chameleon card is about $50 Australian with, that comes with three sensors already. And the Wi-Fi is $150, $200. But looking at, so they're actually produced in Africa, which is where Richard started a lot of his work in Tanzania and countries like that, trying to solve water crisis issues there, which is, there's some great work that he's doing and developed a factory there. So there's, they're working on trying to get them the price lower each time and more accessible for farmers. Yeah. So those cards are our go-to for the farmers because it's, it's, you know, economically viable for them. Yeah. Yeah. I just see a question in the chat from Stefan, I think, about natural inoculum of the cowpea. There is no current available, viable inoculum that's commercial in the Delta, but we have found nodulation and we're doing work on identifying and looking at salt tolerant rhizobium. So there's a space there, which is exciting and it's great that the cowpea that we sowed had nodules when we, when we looked at them, which is, which is great, a great sign. Thanks. There's also another question in the chat and that's also a question I had regarding the salinity levels in the different sites that you had, you mentioned four provinces. So it's, it's probably, it's, it's a gradient because it's up upstream to coast. Did you, I mean, target the crops to the different levels and what would, what's your, how, how did you do that and what are the levels? That's me answer questions. Yeah. So in Socran, the, Oh, they can get up to, so the Vietnamese use grams per litre. So the canal, the sluice gates will shut at four grams per litre of, of the water, irrigation water. So that was the basis that we used in determining if a crop would be suitable, understanding that soil salinization over the, the, you know, course of the dry season, that can get a lot worse and solute potentials and things like that. So if, if a crop can't handle that, it's sort of out of the equation, but we were finding canal EC up to, I think there's been 14, 15 desi seamans recorded. We've got data that sort of says eight and nine in, in those areas of the peak dry season. And then that sort of trend follows slower in the lag with the soil. Yeah. And so, and so using mulch and, and irrigating, we can, we can minimize the solute potential, even though there's salt present, we can minimize the effect of the solute potential. So we can still get the plants to grow without that mulch there, of course, you get the evaporation and salts concentrate and the solute potential will kill the plant. But the other thing is our, because of the nature of the problem, it's quite normal to grow these plants when there is no salinity, but the salinity comes as they grow. So it's the end of the, you know, it's like Brooks says, the reproductive phase, if you get the salinity, that's the problem. And so the, the duration of that, that crop becomes really important because you can, with the right short duration, you can miss the salinity risk. You can actually have your crop harvested before the salinity comes in. But where, where, where we've done trials in the field, you know, we've, we've got, even though, like Brooks said, like they shut the sluice gate at four grams per liter with evaporation and then even irrigation followed by evaporation, you'll get higher salinities in the soil and they will harm the sensitive crops for sure. So that's in provinces where there are sluice gate protection. We've got other provinces where the sluice gates are so effective that you don't get salinity coming in, but you've, you've effectively got a trap to water source. And so water scarcity becomes an issue. So salinity, even though our project is, was focused on salinity, is, it's actually in some provinces, it's water scarcity is the problem. So these alternative crops are still better than rice because it's a different risk profile, different water use. And so it's still much more sensible to grow an alternative crop than it is to try to grow rice in the dry season when you've got a limited amount of fresh water available to you. And then that, that's why the chameleons are so important because you, you optimize that water use efficiency. So you're not wasting water. And then there's more water to, to go around within those trapped enclosed systems. Maybe you can come in here, Ola. Yes, go ahead. Yes. So I also would like to acknowledge this very nice presentation, Brooke and Jason, as what I really liked was that you always had explanations also, you made it an overview and you had always examples. So that was really nice. And you also showed us your own lessons you learned. So I'm really valuing this in your presentation. And I was quite triggered by one that one of you said that it's very important, principles of how to implement and adopt. And then I thought, yeah, is this something one should go further with as it's really this type of thinking of what is needed, why we are doing this, why not that coming to this point of, yes, irrigation every day that is maybe common practice, but it's not a best practice. And so this working with, with people in this food system, more looking into the principles of how doing things. So how thinking it's true. So not coming up to solution saying, okay, now use beetroot and then so many days before or after but more go into this way of doing things. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And it's interesting, like and I'm limited off only really worked in Vietnam, as my international experience, but the farmers there, they'll see something work and just pick up and go with it. And so the willingness, you know, you go from literally going from, hey, let's consider growing alternative crop instead of rice because rice is risky. And then they see it. And now let's grow two alternative crops. And it's like, whoa, just calm down, like maybe we just get one right first, but they're wanting to keep going faster and faster. And so, you know, being there to be able to support that interest and that enthusiasm, but also protect people from perhaps the risks that come with changing so rapidly. But so there's a balance there with dealing with the individual, the individuals, right? I think that's the key to it. Like you've got to tap into that enthusiasm and it might be their age and stage and who's there to farm with them or what their goals are become really important. And we, you talk about learning, which we've spoken about a little bit, there's so much learning involved in it, but of course, but when we see the farmers around our field trial and their neighbours then want to get involved and they start expanding out, then you start, because if they're not going to grow that alternative crop and they want to grow rice, we now have a hydrology conflict, you know, because some people want to have flooded fields next to something that needs to be drained. And so those issues become important. Yeah, and maybe even other things like you have less rice, but you need the rice as a mark. And if you use the rice as a mark, what are you not doing with rice that you may have done before? So then there are always a lot of things to be looked into, whether with one that is very good, you're causing something else, where maybe something is missing at the end. So that this is really these discussions about trade-offs, what we are using and in what way? Yeah. In one of the projects, we've quite interestingly had a profitability analysis combined with a risk analysis. And then you can also see, okay, some cropping systems may have higher profit, but also have a higher risk. And that's, I mean, important to balance. We're running out of time. I would like to still ask you what's your, what are your next steps? What's coming next? Are you going for a second phase? How long is the project running? Do you have a scaling strategy? What is next in your vision? So we're roughly halfway through. And we started in the COVID period. So it was a pretty rough start, but luckily the team at Kanto Yeni did a lot of work, good work that got the project loaded off in the right direction early. So that was good. We're about halfway through. And so what we are looking at doing now is our struggle, like Brooke said in her presentation, that fitting timing into a cropping calendar is very crucial. And so we want to do more work around timing, timing of sewing and timing of these land management practices and preparation. And I think we need to probably start factoring in some, like modeling climatic conditions into that and factoring that into the outcomes and sort of using our field trials to validate those models. So we need to do that. We need to, at the moment, all of our fertility is based on what is common practice in the area, which is largely coming off what people do if they grow maize. And so there's a fair bit of optimization to be had in that space. But yes, moving forward, so this project ends in mid 2025. And so we are looking at developing a new project that still looks at using alternative crops, developing further on what we've been doing, like Brooke says, focusing on legumes a little bit more. And of course, Vietnam, like every other country in the world, soil, carbon, greenhouse gas emissions have to be factored into that. And so looking at the benefits that our improved systems with these alternative crops that deliver benefits for the farmers, but also benefits for the system and quantifying some of those as well, so that that can be used. So it's quantified, it's known that if farmers change to this practice, then these are the benefits that come from it, social as well as, you know, musical. Very interesting. Thank you. I'm sure you'll get that work funded. I also hope that we keep on engaging and maybe even try and formalize a collaboration in more detail in the future. For now, thank you very much for the presentation. It was very enjoyable. And the next Delta talks, I'm not exactly sure if we have a date already. We have in about four weeks, the International Rice Congress coming up and the whole world, of course, is very busy with that and focuses on that. So I'm not sure if that is maybe in the way and we need to find an alternative date. We will announce that ASAP. So thanks everybody for participating. Thanks for the opportunity. It was great to see you again, too. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye.