THE National Variety Trials (NVT) program will soon be fully managed by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) as part of its organisational restructure.
Since its inception in 2005, the GRDC has outsourced management of the NVT program to the Australian Crop Accreditation System Limited (ACAS).
ACAS is a not-for-profit company that partnered with the GRDC, Grain Producers Australia (GPA) and the Australian Seed Federation (ASF).
GRDC managing director Steve Jefferies said the decision to bring the management of the NVT program in-house was made to give the organisation increased capacity to value-add to its data collection.
“If you look at the NVT from both a national and an international perspective, it’s arguably the largest multiple field crop performance evaluation network of its kind anywhere in the world,” Mr Jefferies said.
“It is an enormous national logistic exercise, there are over 600 different trials spread right across Australia, covering 10 different crops.
“We believe that with the enormous data that is generated through the NVT that there are opportunities to capture much greater value from that data and that’s one of the major drivers.”
Mr Jefferies said the management of the NVT program would be integrated with a new business group within the GRDC, which would primarily focus on data.
The formation of the new business group is part the company’s plans to “realign and refocus” its organisational structure and operations to better deliver RD&E outcomes.
“As part of our whole realignment of the business we’re looking at all of the things that we currently outsource and are looking for where there’s synergies and opportunities to bring in-house,” Mr Jefferies said.
“NVT will be integrated with our new business group which will combine bioinformatics, modelling, digital agriculture and big data – there’s a common thread through all of this of data.
“The idea is to establish capacity to be able to mine as much value out of that enormous network of information as possible to deliver value to growers.
“This is a huge resource that we believe we could better utilise to use the economy of scale to drive other R&D outcomes.”
Mr Jefferies said ACAS was informed of the decision late last year and received formal notification on July 7.
He said the GRDC was in negotiations with ACAS to ensure a smooth transition which was expected to be complete by March, 2018.
“It’s not going to be too difficult to do it, we expect minimal disruption as a result,” Mr Jefferies said.
“Right back since 2005 we’ve maintained the subcontracting of the trials themselves on the ground, so that part of it GRDC has been managing the whole way.
“That isn’t going to change, so in terms of how the trials are run and on the ground there’ll be no change, they’ll be run under the same very rigorous protocols.
“It’s more about bringing in the data management and background logistics and co-ordination activity.”
Mr Jefferies said he was confident the GRDC had the capacity to successfully manage the NVT program internally without significantly impacting grower levies.
He expected more staff and resources would be required to manage the program.
“The primary driver of it isn’t about cost, there will be swings and roundabouts with this but I think what we’re trying to do ultimately is extract greater value,” he said.
“In terms of the total cost to the GRDC – what proportion of our investment goes into it – it could increase in the area of data mining and it could increase in the area of partnering with other R&D, so the whole network may increase in cost but that’s to deliver much greater value.”
ACAS was contacted for a response but was unable to make comment at the time Farm Weekly went to print.
