Frameworks
Biosecurity case study — Fall armyworm
After being detected in the Torres Strait in January 2020, the fall armyworm (FAW) arrived on mainland Australia in February 2020.
Native to tropical and sub-tropical areas of the Americas, the pest has reportedly spread across two continents and more than 60 countries in under three years. It feeds on a wide range of plant species and has the potential to damage important crop species including maize, sorghum, soybean, winter cereals, peanuts and sunflowers, as well as cotton and sugarcane.
Later stage larvae can be highly destructive, severing seedlings, or causing defoliation or damage to reproductive structures. FAW has a high reproductive rate and dispersive capability. Females can produce up to 2,000 eggs in their lifetime; some estimates suggest that they can travel around 100km in a night and 500km in a generation
Through the Plant Biosecurity Research Initiative, we formed collaborative research partnerships with other plant-based research and development corporations (RDCs), the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and Plant Health Australia, while also working closely with state departments.
We coordinated a partnership with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, FMC Australasia and Corteva Agriscience in a CSIRO-led project examining the genetic make-up and insecticide sensitivities of FAW, which will ultimately help growers better manage the pest. The project will address an immediate priority — the characterisation of FAW in Australia and South-East Asia. This information will be an important component in the development of sustainable management strategies.
We have also invested in a project led by cesar to investigate FAW biology, spread and establishment potential, as well as options for improving industry capability to manage the pest now and into the future.
We worked closely with agricultural chemical companies, other RDCs and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority via Plant Health Australia so that growers could have access to chemical control options for FAW via permits. This included applying for pre-emptive chemical permits for FAW, with the first permit issued in April 2018 and the second in February 2020.
Capacity and ability
Our Capacity and Ability Framework sets out our approach to developing the Australian grains industry capacity and ability as it relates to research, development and extension.
Capacity relates to the availability of appropriately skilled people and the institutions, infrastructure and systems to support those people to contribute to a sustainable and successful industry.
Ability relates to the skills and competencies individuals need in different roles in that industry.
The framework refines the scope of our investment in capacity and ability to provide greater strategic focus on key activities. It outlines strategic elements and principles for investment to ensure the Australian grains industry is equipped to meet current and future challenges, and we can deliver on our purpose of investing in research, development and extension (RD&E) to create enduring profitability for Australian grain growers.
Capacity and ability investments made in 2019–20 are detailed in Table 6.
Table 6: Capacity and ability investments in 2019—20
Strategies or priorities | Investment title | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
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Support growers to develop their ability to adopt the latest R&D outputs to improve their profitability. Improve advisers’ ability to enable growers to adopt R&D outputs. | Grower and adviser study tours |
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Ensure the grains industry has access to growers, researchers and advisers with the leadership skills to:
Drive adoption of R&D outputs that contribute to grower profitability. | Australian Rural Leadership Program | Greater engagement with the program resulted in an increase in number of quality applications received and supported from individuals in the Australian grains industry. |
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Nuffield Farming Scholarships | Areas of research for supported scholars closely aligned to GRDC strategic priorities including Key Investment Targets. |
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Diversity in Agriculture Leadership Program |
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Ensure the grains industry has access to growers, researchers and advisers with the leadership skills to:
Drive adoption of R&D outputs that contribute to grower profitability. Improve advisers’ ability to enable growers to adopt R&D outputs. Attract and motivate the best researchers to work in grains-related research. | Emerging Leader Award | Activities supported:
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Ensure the grains industry has access to growers, researchers and advisers with the leadership skills to:
Improve advisers’ ability to enable growers to adopt R&D outputs. | Boosting the capability and capacity of graduate agronomists—GRDC northern region | Graduate agronomists and advisers throughout GRDC northern region are aware of all GRDC resources available to them and introduced to a network of experienced agronomists and advisers, beyond their employers, to ensure that they are best able to serve Australian grain growers. |
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Attract and motivate the best researchers to work in grains-related research. Researchers inform their approaches through active engagement with industry and growers. | Recognising and Rewarding Excellence Awards |
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Support higher degree students to embark on a career in grains-related research and development. Attract and motivate the best researchers to work in grains-related research. | GRDC Research Scholarships |
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Support early career researchers to embark on a career in grains-related research and development. Attract the best researchers to work in grains-related research. | GRDC Post-doctoral fellowships | Contributed to the pipeline of researchers developing the requisite abilities in disciplines relevant to the grains industry. |
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Researchers inform their approaches through active engagement with industry and growers. Research and researcher abilities are aligned with GRDC’s strategy. | National annual investment area forums for collaboration and technical review | Improved collaboration and mentoring between research agencies and leaders in each investment area across the three regions. Developed more robust projects through a process of:
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Data management and analytics
This framework aims to enable researchers and growers to capture and exploit data relevant to the grains industry, including R&D experimentation, paddock and farm, production and economic, and environmental characterisation data. There are six strategic elements:
- capture valuable data
- make data accessible and actively share data and learnings
- invest in analytics to create innovative insights and value
- measure investment impact
- ensure we have a workforce that has the necessary data and analytics skills and capacity,
- apply governance for effective data usage.
2019–20 data management and analytics investments are detailed in Table 7.
Table 7: Data management and analytics investments in 2019—20
Strategies or priorities | Investment | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
Data and learnings from Online farm trials actively shared. | Online Farm Trials. A GRDC-owned online platform for openly sharing results from Australian field-based and on-farm trials addressing grains development and extension (D&E) questions. |
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Opportunities are identified for making BFDC data easy to find, accessible, and reusable into the future. | Better Fertiliser Decisions for Cropping BFDC sought to help growers and advisor determine critical soil test values (below which a response to fertiliser is likely) using public and private soil test-crop response data for nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and sulphur use in cereals, oilseeds, and pulses. Trial data was retained in a central repository accessible to registered users through an online query tool. The data is now persisted with the NSW Department of Primary Industries. |
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Grower communications and extension
This framework builds on the significant progress we have made to date in communicating R&D outcomes to growers while increasing our focus on extension that, in-turn, leads to increased technology adoption and practice change on-farm.
To ensure our communications and extension (C&E) activities are grower driven, the majority of our C&E staff are in regional offices to facilitate active, effective engagement with growers and other key stakeholders.
We are actively engaged in the communication of our R&D investment outputs and outcomes but we are not involved in the direct delivery of extension. Extension activities are delivered by some of our partners.
The framework reflects our recognition of the changing extension landscape in Australia and aims to leverage and strengthen existing extension channels. It also outlines our approach to maintaining and building key stakeholder relationships in order to continue to deliver enduring profitability to Australian grain growers.
Critical success factors for the C&E framework are the ability to engage the whole GRDC business in a shared and agreed approach, and to be able to effectively communicate the shared approach both internally and externally.
The framework outlines clear C&E objectives and targets, as well as outlining approaches for measuring and evaluating both grain grower awareness and ultimately adoption of R&D outcomes.
The investments made in this framework in 2019–20 are detailed in Table 8.
Table 8: Grower communications and extension investments in 2019—20
Strategies or priorities | Investment title | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
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Strategy 1 Improve GRDC’s understanding of grain grower needs, drivers and decision-making processes so as to facilitate effective adoption of R&D outcomes through C&E activities. | Grower Networks (also relevant to strategies 2 and 5) |
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GRDC Research Update Series – southern, northern and western regions (also relevant to strategies 2, 3 and 4) |
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2020 Grower Survey (also relevant to strategy 4) |
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Strategies or priorities | Investment title | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
Strategy 1 Improve GRDC’s understanding of grain grower needs, drivers and decision-making processes so as to facilitate effective adoption of R&D outcomes through C&E activities. | Dealing with the Dry Forums (also relevant to strategy 3) |
| 602 attendees at Dealing with the Dry forums. |
Northern communications and extension activities — Field Days (also relevant to strategies 4, 5 and 6) |
| seven days of grower and adviser engagement plus attendance at major field day walks. | |
AgTeCH 19 – Sponsorship and planning committee (Also relevant to strategy 6) |
| 260 attendees. | |
Conference support |
| N/A | |
Strategies or priorities | Investment title | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
Strategy 2 Enable stakeholders to understand and engage with GRDC’s investment process. Ensure all stakeholders have the opportunity to participate in an effective, comprehensive and two-way investment process. Embed the concept of participatory research, development and extension into investments where appropriate (giving growers insight into GRDC’s investments). | Farm Business Updates (also relevant to strategies 3 and 4) | 15 Farm Business Updates held nationally in 2019–20. | 809 attendees. |
Optimising profitability of high rainfall zone farming systems-survey, farmer-scale demonstration trials and field days (also relevant to strategy 4) | This extension-based investment complements the research component of the same investment ensuring participatory research and development is conducted. It has given growers a voice in the investment and will ensure outcomes are extended in a timely way to growers. |
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Strategy 3 Ensure timely C&E activities align with GRDC RD&E Plan and regional grower priorities. C&E activities to align with new five-year RD&E Plan priorities. Ensure C&E tools and channels are best matched to specific R&D outcomes and the target audience. | Understanding soils to assess amelioration potential in the Southern Wimmera | Complexity of soil interactions and the coexisting, interdependent nature of constraints makes identification and management difficult. Small group face-to-face delivery with tangible material to view, matching the channels of delivery to the target audience and behavioural barriers to adoption. | Due to the tangible and practical approach these workshops resulted in more than 95 per cent of attendees improving confidence in constraint ID and 70 per cent of respondents followed through or committed to action resulting from the workshop. |
PulseCheck group activities – GRDC northern region | Multiple extension activities across all 11 subregions on pulse related issues. | 625 attendees — three times per year. | |
Strategies or priorities | Investment title | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
Strategy 4 Continually evaluate and revise GRDC communication channels based on impact and value. Raise awareness of investment portfolio outputs and outcomes through the most appropriate communication channel. Clearly communicate information about new GRDC investments, and the range and scope of GRDC investment portfolio to growers in a timely way. Ensure clear, consistent acknowledgement and third-party attribution for GRDC investments. | GRDC branded communications (excluding GroundCover) | Over 80 products digital and hardcopy products were produced during 2019–20. | |
Strategies or priorities | Investment title | Outputs or achievements | Relevant quantitative measures of success |
Strategy 5 Leverage and further strengthen existing extension channels. Evolve model of GSGs and RCSNs to align with GRDC RD&E Plan. | GRDC podcasts and videos | Podcast and video material developed, providing research content to growers and advisers. The content was provided in a range of different styles and formats, yielding >500 view/listens per podcast/video. https://www.youtube.com/c/theGRDC/videos | 2,088 subscribers to GRDC YouTube Channel 74 videos available during 2019–20 Videos with over 500 views included:
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Red Meat Updates (also relevant to strategy 6) | The majority of grain growers in Tasmania are also red meat producers so leveraging this opportunity also allowed for building stronger relationships with Meat and Livestock Australia other industry partners. | Program rated 9.01 out of 10 by participants. | |
Strategy 6 Build relationships with research partners and business investment partners | 2020 Research Partner Survey | An annual survey of GRDC’s research partners conducted since 2000. The Research Partner Survey for 2020 was completed in June 2020. | 91 per cent response rate. |
Development of case studies on GRDC research priorities | Up to 20 case studies developed to demonstrate the value of GRDC invested research and for use in GRDC publications or other communication. | Studies developed in 2019–20 include:
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Visit
https://www.transparency.gov.au/annual-reports/grains-research-and-development-corporation/reporting-year/2019-20-28