season Outlook Briefings 2025
Season Outlook Briefings September 2025.
In September 2025 Murray Irrigation hosted three Season Outlook Briefings located in Wakool, Deniliquin and Finley. These events were designed to provide customers with timely updates on seasonal conditions, water availability, and strategic planning for the 2025/26 Irrigation Season.
This concise hour and a half session included presentations from:
Shahadat Chowdhury & Priyantha Jayakody (NSW DCCEEW) – Water Allocation Forecast Outlook 2025/26
Eric Snodgrass (Nutrient Ag Solutions) - Water forecast across the MIL footprint.
Marrianne Graham (RuralCo Water) – Water Trade and brokerage update.
These sessions were well received by customers with 81 attendees. Customer feedback post sessions showed a strong interest in making these an annual event due to the value they provided and encouraged more customers to attend future events.
For customers who were unable to attend recordings of the presentations can be found below.
Presentations
Shahadat Chowdhury & Priyantha Jayakody (NSW DCCEEW)
Water Allocation Forecast Outlook 2025/26
Eric Snodgrass (Nutrient Ag Solutions)
Water forecast across the MIL footprint.
Marrianne Graham (RuralCo Water)
Water Trade and brokerage update.
Speaker profiles
Marianne Graham
Marianne was born in Wagga Wagga. Over her diverse career, Marianne has accumulated a wealth of financial experience as a trader and broker in the volatile electricity markets where her skills in analysis and deep knowledge of supply and demand factors helped her clients make successful decisions. She brings this skill-set with her to the water markets to assist her clients in understanding price drivers, empowering them in their water purchasing or selling strategy.
Eric Snodgrass
Eric Snodgrass is a Sr. Science Fellow for Nutrien Ag Solutions, where he develops predictive, analytical software solutions to manage weather risk for global production agriculture. He provides frequent weather updates that focus on how high-impact weather events influence global agriculture productivity. His current research uses machine learning to better understand field-level weather impacts on yields in the US and to increase confidence in long-range weather prediction. He presents his research as a featured speaker at over 100 conferences annually where he provides logistical guidance and solutions to weather sensitive financial institutions, farmers, commodity traders, and other stakeholders. He was recently awarded the Educator Award in 2023 for Distinguished Service to America’s High Technology Agriculture by the Mid America Croplife Association.
Shahadat Chowdhury
Shahadat Chowdhury is the manager of the team that allocates water in NSW. He has been a senior member of the team for last 8 years. He played a key part in securing water during the tinderbox drought of 2017-2020. Shahadat has been working for the department since 1992, in various roles, assisting water management of NSW. His expertise includes determining water allocation, securing critical water needs, modelling water delivery, simulating irrigation demand, projecting climate change impact and so on. Shahadat is a civil engineer with a Ph D in hydrology from the University of NSW.
Priyantha Jayakody
Priyantha Jayakody is Lead Hydrologist in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, NSW, with over a decade of experience in the water allocation team. He brings deep expertise in integrating science and policy to support sustainable water management under changing climatic conditions. He holds a PhD in Engineering from Mississippi State University, USA, and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, contributing to advancements in water resource planning and climate resilience.
More information
For more information on the Season Outlook Briefings, or to include any dietary requirements to your RSVP, please contact the Customer Experience team on 1300 138 265 or customersupport@murrayirrigation.com.au.
