THE Centre for Crop and Disease Management (CCDM) opened a new $46 million research facility at Curtin University last week.
The new building will house up to 80 CCDM researchers who will work on fungal pathogens which cost the Australian grains industry more than $1.5 billion per year in productivity losses and control.
The building was opened by Agriculture and Food Minister Mark Lewis who said the grain industry had a clear focus on economic development and it was crucial that research and development was pursued by industry in partnership with government and the tertiary sector.
"The establishment and the embodiment of the CCDM is a key example of the GRDC partnership with tertiary sectors and the benefits of this innovation and this investment will not only yield research results for the WA industry, but across Australia," Mr Lewis said.
"Given that the agrifood exports from WA are valued at about $8b per annum and we service international markets in Asia and the Middle East, there's no doubt the grains industry is the backbone of the State's agricultural industry, producing more than 60 per cent of the State's agricultural agrifood and fibre production value."
The CCDM was launched in 2014 and is co-supported by Curtin University and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), with a $100m investment over five years to research fungicide resistance, molecular genetics and farming systems and agronomy.
CCDM researchers using the new facilities will continue to work on reducing the economic burden of diseases including yellow spot and septoria nodorum blotch in wheat, powdery mildew in wheat and barley, net blotch in barley, sclerotinia in canola and ascochyta blight in pulses.
The building design includes physical containment laboratories which enable researchers to experiment and manipulate crop diseases.
GRDC managing director Steve Jefferies said the facility and its on-going research would play a pivotal role in providing the breeding industry with novel sources of disease resistance and growers with tools to manage the risks associated with plant disease.
"Investment and collaboration in areas of disease resistance in the breeding community raises the bar across the whole industry in protecting the crop and allows the breeding industry to focus its investment in improved grain yield and quality while not competing for access to disease resistance," Dr Jefferies said.
He said research would see a reduction in the use of fungicides, which could offer growers a point of differentiation in global markets.
"There is an emerging opportunity to provide high quality food into global markets and to produce with less or no residues is an absolute point of differentiation that Australia, and particularly WA, can deliver."
