The photos were taken by project leader and DPI&F research scientist, Troy Frederiks, who has been out all night over the past six weeks recording frost events at Kingsthorpe and Hermitage Research Station, where temperatures dropped well below -4 deg C at plant height.

The research, funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), will determine how winter cereal crops are damaged from frost.

In Queensland and northern NSW, the combined yield loss in wheat and barley crops due to frost damage is estimated at $120 million in an average year.

Mr Frederiks said farmers who grew crops in areas susceptible to frost faced reduced yields or even total crop loss.

In response, Mr Frederiks and fellow DPI&F scientists Dr Jack Christopher and Dr Andrew Borrell are using thermal infra-red imaging to better understand the physiological effect of frost on plants—to help identify variations in frost adaptation that could lead to the development of more frost-resistant crops.

“These thermal infra-red imaging techniques and findings will be very valuable as an aid in understanding the physiological effect of frost on winter cereals—information that has the potential to lead to a breakthrough in the development of frost-resistant winter cereals,” Mr Frederiks said.

“The imaging can be used both in the field and under artificial conditions to study super-cooling, nucleation and ice propagation in plants.

“Once frost resistance is incorporated into a variety, that resistance should be durable as there is no threat of a breakdown in resistance.”

Mr Frederiks said if cereal cultivars were developed that could tolerate minimum temperatures up to 2 deg C colder (than that tolerated by the present cultivars) before damage occurred, such varieties would dramatically reduce the frequency and cost of severe frost damage events.

The combined effect of direct frost damage, late flowering to minimise frost risk and terminal drought stress, represent the most important constraint to increased winter cereal production in the northern grains region.

“The yield of early sown crops that escape frost can be 20-50pc more than crops sown at the recommended time,” Mr Frederiks said. The team has been collaborating with leading UK frost researcher and infrared thermal imaging expert Professor Mick Fuller of Plymouth University.