Research

Growcom has welcomed the release of a new Australian-Grown Horticulture Sustainability Framework by industry R&D corporation Hort Innovation.

The COVID-19 pandemic risks having a deep and lasting impact on Australia’s first responder community. New research highlighting alarming rates of anxiety, depression and burnout potentially leaves Australia with a scar that’s harder to heal that the disease itself.

China’s anti-dumping duties have seriously disrupted Australia’s wine trade, the latest research report from ABARES has found. The report, Australian wine in China: Impact of China’s anti-dumping duties, investigates the short- to medium-term consequences of China’s punitive anti-dumping measures on Australian wine exports.

Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and Optus have released findings of a joint nationwide project to improve bushfire resilience of critical telecommunications. The research analysed where there is risk of damage to the network and where upgrades could reduce vulnerability to future bushfire events.

A ‘warm’ COVID-19 vaccine suitable for remote and resource-limited locations lacking access to cold storage supply chains is one step closer following an international collaboration between scientists from India and Australia.

Cultural burning doesn't just occur in northern Australia. Across southern Australia, many Indigenous people are practicing and promoting cultural fire management, yet the emergency management sector has limited experience in collaborating with them on fire management.

More nitrogen isn’t always better – especially in a drier year – when producing quality hay is the key to farm returns. That’s according to research funded by AgriFutures Export Fodder Program as part of the National Hay Agronomy (NHA) Project ... The NHA project is a four-year investment by the AgriFutures Export Fodder Program and aims to address current knowledge gaps in the Australian export fodder industry.

Kevin Tolhurst, Jerry Vanclay. Some ecologists and conservationists, opposed to timber harvesting, are trying to use bushfire disasters as a lever to stop native forest harvesting, but their case is based on opinion, beliefs and selective science. A 2016 study of over 1 million hectares burnt by wildfire in the 2003 fires in Victoria, showed that fire severity across the landscape was driven by weather conditions, slope aspect, fuel levels, atmospheric stability, and the scale of the fires. There was no discernible impact of timber harvesting on fire severity at the landscape scale.

John O'Donnell. After the large bushfires impacting on towns and cities in recent years, it is opportune to review potential bushfire protection opportunities for towns and cities across Australia ... The focus of this document is on exploring all opportunities to best protect towns and cities from bushfires, optimising resident safety and optimising firefighter safety.

Millions of horse owners the world over are set to benefit from a more effective method to treat equine gastric disease, a common condition affecting horses, especially in thoroughbred racing and the endurance riding sector.

A series of resources including an interactive online tool have been launched to help growers design their crops for most secure and effective pollination. Australian-first research has delivered breakthrough findings and tools to secure the future of pollination-dependent crops amid ongoing threats to both managed and native pollinators.

Worldwide, seaweed cultivation and utilisation are multi-billion dollar industries, yet Australasia plays little role in either. This is set to change, with growing interest in using our coastal and offshore waters to produce seaweeds that will not only provide high-value products for global markets, but will help mitigate human carbon emissions both directly through products that lower methane emissions and indirectly through long term carbon sequestration.

David Waterhouse. The diverse landscape of mountains, valleys, hills, lowlands and sea cliffs of the LHI provide an array of habitat types supporting many distinctive flora. Research Scientists Dr Andrew Denholm and Dr John Porter have been coming to Lord Howe island for many years to study its unique natural values. While it is early days yet, they see promising signs that the removal of rodents is having positive effects for the Islands plants.

CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, will spearhead a $1.7 million project to identify new treatments for COVID-19, including 'long-COVID'. Scientists will develop a faster, smarter way of rapidly screening existing drugs and advancing those that can be used to treat COVID-19 and aim to have identified the suitable TGA- or FDA-approved drug candidates to progress to phase 2-3 human clinical trials within a year.

This article may trigger strong emotions. To clarify, COVID-19 as an infection does pose serious health risks to vulnerable people. That being said, I believe we must still discuss the issues affecting our nation and communities in an open and transparent manner ... We now see state-wide restrictions and lockdowns as a result of low case numbers. At the time of printing, there is one person in ICU in Australia with COVID-19 and a total of 54 in hospital, from a nation of 25,360,000 people. Yes, COVID-19 is a risk, but so are lockdowns. The trigger for these lockdowns is the numbers of positive PCR tests. What if a PCR test didn’t accurately reflect live virus but instead Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) of dead virus?

The commodity price boom – which has seen some agricultural commodities rise to seven-year highs in recent months – has “rubbed off” on the wool market with prices recovering from last year’s lows, albeit not to the same heady highs, according to agribusiness banking specialist Rabobank.

The start to the grain cropping season in Western Australia has been wetter than usual which could mean higher-than-average crop disease levels in the coming months. Two new research projects aim to increase knowledge and information relating to two key crop diseases – to assist the State’s grain growers with disease management and to reduce yield losses.

Food Agility CRC invites you to join us for our free June virtual seminar Crop Design for Adaptation to Variable Production Environments with Professor Graeme Hammer (Queensland University of Technology).

Nan Nicholson. The Dunoon Dam koalas are even more important than first thought. They can help other koala populations to recover robust genetics. New information has been revealed about the local population of koalas which would be impacted by the proposed 15ML dam at Dunoon.