Australia
October 14, 2014

A comprehensive overview of investments that are helping drive the production capacity and profitability of the Australian grains industry has now been released and is available at www.grdc.com.au/ProjectSummaries

Each year the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) invests millions of dollars in research, development, skills and capacity building projects and the latest overview summarises projects active in 2013/2014.

The overview summarises the scope, aims and targeted region of each individual research project currently funded by the GRDC as well as providing contact details for the relevant researchers.

Comprising a massive six volumes and more than 700 pages, the summaries have been written by research partners and cover six key themes – meeting market requirements, improving crop yield, protecting your crop, advancing profitable farming systems, maintaining resource base and building skills and capacity.

GRDC’s Northern Panel chair James Clark (pictured) said it was important to raise awareness among growers, advisors and industry stakeholders of the extent and focus of existing GRDC investments.

“Communication and collaboration with our research partners, industry stakeholders and growers is a vital part of what we do. It helps us refine and focus our research investment to deliver meaningful outcomes on a paddock level,” Mr Clark said.

“We will continue to invest in areas that can help drive profitability improvements for northern growers like soil and crop nutrition, weed seed and herbicide resistance management, break crops, crop rotations, pests, disease, nematodes, frost management and regional research capacity.

“However feedback from industry is invaluable and I urge anyone with a stake and interest in the industry to read through the project summaries and direct any feedback to the GRDC.”

The review expands the GRDC’s existing communication products such as the Five-year Strategic Research and Development Plan, the Annual Operating Plan, the Annual Report and the Growers Report which summarise the research and development portfolio.

Together these communication products provide a detailed path forward for the national grains industry, offering information on the full suite of projects which command more than $140 million in funding.

GRDC’s project portfolio is dynamic with projects concluding and new projects commencing on a regular basis and it is anticipated that the project summaries will become a regular publication, available to everyone from the GRDC website.

A broad range of information on any of the projects is available by searching the GRDC website www.grdc.com.au.

Any feedback on the project summaries should be emailed to feedback@grdc.com.au

 

Website: http://www.grdc.com.au

Published: October 14, 2014