GRDC announces research priorities

Elimination of defects in wheat and barley, answers to hostile and/or altered soils, national initiatives on pulses and soil biology, precision agriculture and new grain products rank highly in a new agenda for the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).

GRDC's manager of program operations, John Harvey, said the GRDS had some $10 million available for new investments in winter cereal improvement in 2002-03.

After consulting growers, researchers and its regional panels, and analysing industry trends, it was looking for proposals for research projects that addressed:

* barley improvement and industry development, on a regional/national model with three regionally based improvement programs plus a component responsible for coordination and generic research;

* accelerated development of the $100 million durum industry, to identify and develop outstanding issues that prevent the pasta wheats from being grown more widely in Australia;

* elimination within 10 years of defects in cereals like pre-harvest sprouting, late maturity alpha-amylase and black point through a combination of education, implementation of existing technology and further underpinning research, and

* molecular markers for winter cereals, continuing a focus on discovery and implementation for economically and environmentally valuable traits but also looking for new approaches to molecular breeding arising from genomic research, high-throughput technologies and bioinformatics.