Biotech to inject life into sugar industry

A $54 million Cooperative Research Centre using biotech to inject fresh life into the economics of the sugar industry is due to open for business next month.

The CRC for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology, based in Queensland, is expected to open its doors on August 1, about a month behind its original schedule.

The new research centre will be the focus of a bid to deploy biotechnology as a way of reversing the slumping fortunes of the domestic sugar industry in which Queensland is a dominant player.

The Queensland Government, which last October privately pledged $3.5 million for the CRC’s seven-year funding cycle last October, publicly confirmed its contribution in late June.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said the sugar industry has been hard hit in recent times by the removal of tariffs, consecutive poor seasons, low world prices and intense competition with Brazilian producers.

In the past six year, the sugar industry’s worth to Queensland has slumped from $1.6 billion annually to about $1.4 billion, he said.

The sugar industry needs to reinvent itself and the success of the new CRC in finding alternative products from sugar and sugarcane will play a key part in that process, Beattie said. The new centre will encourage the sugar industry to develop new products such as biodegradable plastics and pharmaceuticals by manipulating plants through biotechnological techniques.

It will also explore ways of increasing the sugar content of existing plant varieties and of converting cane trash into bio-fuel. Another aspect of the centre will be its educational role in providing a training ground for a new generation of world-class technologists,

The centre, to be based at the University of Queensland will bring together Australia’s world leading research groups in sugarcane molecular biology and chemical engineering.

Participating in the new CRC are four Queensland universities, the CSIRO, a number of existing research groups (including the industry-supported Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations and Sugar Research Institute and the federally-funded Sugar Research Development Corp), DuPont and three sugar mills.

More than half the new CRC’s budget over the next seven years, or $28 million, is coming from the federal government.

Sugar industry sources said the bulk of the money will go into salaries and operating costs. Several dozen new research positions could also be created across the institutes making up the CRC, the sources said.