Drought across Australia's food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin, is getting worse, with Murray River inflows dropping last month to the lowest levels recorded.

The Murray-Darling Basin Commission's latest drought update said prospects for irrigated food production in the region were grim unless the catchment received significant winter and spring rains.

The basin, which accounts for 39 per cent of Australia's gross value in agriculture production, grows 47 per cent of Australia's staple cereal crops, including wheat and rice.

It's the basin's fourth-driest autumn on record and inflows to the catchment last month were 95 gigalitres well below the previous record low of 106GL in June 2006. The long-term average is 680GL.

The drought update said the seasonal climate outlook issued by the Bureau of Meteorology showed a shift in the odds towards drier than average conditions across the basin from July to September, including the high-yielding catchments of the upper Murray and its tributaries.

The combined effect of low storage levels and low inflows had resulted in record low state irrigation allocations along the Murray River system, with allocations for 2008-09 currently between 0 and 2 per cent.

During last financial year, only 17GL of environmental water was used by the Federal Government's Living Murray program which had promised to deliver 500GL to restore the river's health. The commission's chief executive, Wendy Craik, said 2008-09 was shaping up to be '' a very tough year for water availability'' with continuing pressure on river environments. This is very disappointing, and the likelihood of upper Murray inflows being above average for the remainder of winter and spring is very low.''

Dr Craik said water levels in the Lower Lakes of the Coorong wetlands in South Australia had temporarily stabilised, but unless there was a significant improvement in water availability for South Australia, the ''outlook for the next 12 months is extremely poor''.

The drought update warned the outlook for the year ahead presented ''very serious challenges for the environment''.

Wetlands along the Murray remained disconnected from the river and large areas of floodplains had not flooded for 15 years.

''This ... period without significant flooding is considerably longer than any other dry period experienced in the last 117 years for which records exist,'' the update said.

Australian Greens water resources spokeswoman Senator Rachel Siewert said the report highlighted the poor state of the Murray and the need for urgent immediate action.

'' These figures come just days after the COAG [Council of Australian Governments] meeting where the state and Commonwealth governments failed to deliver any urgent response to the crisis,'' she said.

www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/nations-food-bowl-faces-grim-times/809040.aspx