Australian farmers are a famously innovative lot, inventing the first mechanical harvester and the stump-jump plough to name just a couple of famous innovations.

The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) wants to tap into their vast pool of ideas by giving them a challenge.

Farmers in the central and southern wheatbelt enjoyed the opportunity this week to raise grain growing issues with members of the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) National Panel on their annual visit to WA.

On tour were GRDC Executive Managers John Harvey (Varieties), Vince Logan (New Products), Greg Fraser (Practices) and Gavin Whitely (Corporate Services), Western Region Panel Chairman and Kojonup grower, Neil Young, Northern Panel Chairman, James Clark, Southern Panel Chairman, David Shannon and National Panel Coordinator, Julia Polkinghorne.

Agriculture won’t be in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2015, but it was much discussed at a GRDC workshop about on-farm carbon accounting.

Dr Martin Blumenthal, GRDC Manager, Agronomy, Soils and Environment, said workshop participants saw the need for a common terminology and agreed protocols for measuring and analysing carbon given the climate of uncertainty.

A new university curriculum has been developed to reinvigorate the training and development of Australia’s next generation of plant breeders and crop scientists. 

Launched as the International Centre for Plant Breeding Education and Research (ICPBER) by the University of Western Australia (UWA), the new curriculum will take a lead in heading off a looming, critical shortage of specialists working on crop improvement. It is widely acknowledged that a generational gap has opened up in plant breeding expertise after a worldwide decline in agricultural graduates over the past decade and longer.

While human consumption of lupins is presently at a very low level, with most of the crop sold to intensive animal industries, it has exciting potential for human use and a growing national and international market.

The GRDC has now included Grains Research Update newsletters for the GRDC Northern and Southern regions online. These newsletters provide technical agronomic information to accompany the GRDC adviser update program. To view more, click here.

Twin sowing, a new technique for sowing legume pastures using hard seed undersown with a cereal or oil seed crop, could substantially reduce costs of pasture establishment for Australian growers.

The Southern Queensland Farming System (SQFS) project is celebrating 12 months of operation and success in five major domains that cut across the region’s farming systems and landscapes. 

The SQFS project has been funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), which is tailoring the way it does research and extension by using different models that suit the issues at hand, the respective needs of different regions and the local research and extension capacity.

“Climate 21: Understanding climate change and how to manage it” is a one day conference to be held in Perth on March 27, 2009.

Organised by DAFWA and supported by the GRDC and the State Government, it will provide the latest research and thinking on climate change from a WA regional perspective.

The GRDC has released the first comprehensive environmental plan for the grains industry to ensure the industry has a clear framework for prioritising environmental R&D.

The plan covers existing and anticipated production constraints, from landscape issues through to climate variability and climate change. It examines risks and opportunities, acknowledges the extensive contribution many growers are already making to sound environmental management, and is intended to demonstrate the industry’s proactive approach to its changing environmental circumstances.