Highlights from Australian agrifood innovation.

Forest growers across Australia have been enthusiastically exploring recently-launched technology that enables easy and affordable assessment of wood quality in standing trees.

The innovative tool also supports decision making relating to planting locations and forest management practices, to best serve the future quality of stands.

Real-time reports from sentinel oysters could provide an early warning of changing water conditions. 

Investigator Ashfaqur Rahman, who leads CSIRO’s data analytics team at Data61, explains that as the environment changes, the behaviour of animals – including oysters – changes in response. 

Every strawberry season, researchers from the Australian Strawberry Breeding Program trial, taste and assess thousands of new varieties of strawberry developed through natural breeding to identify the best tasting and yielding fruit for Australia.

Funded by Hort Innovation in partnership with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, the program supports the Australian strawberry industry by giving them access to improved, locally adapted superior varieties.   

Heat stress is a complex and on-going issue for the livestock export industry. Many factors influence risk, including that some animals – like humans – are affected by heat more or less than others in the same conditions.

LiveCorp has taken a novel, Open Innovation, approach to fast-track its latest search for solutions. 

Forest growers can now easily and affordably assess wood quality across their resource, while also making decisions around location and management that will best serve the quality of their stands going forward.

Scientists behind a new research project say the ability to predict, maintain and improve timber quality in plantations will help decrease risk and improve the productivity, competitiveness and profitability of Australia’s growers and processors.

Ultra-high pressure water cutting is making its way onto implements used in the cotton farming system.

Investment in biosecurity research is a valuable insurance policy for the sugarcane industry to protect against exotic threats. In this article, we talk with Sugar Research Australia (SRA) researcher Dr Rob Magarey about one of these collaborative research projects. 

The Australian sugarcane industry has a strong track record of being prepared well in advance for potential biosecurity risks. Just one such example occurred in 2006 when the then-exotic disease smut was first detected Australia.

At the time, the industry had already recognised the risk associated with this disease and the possibility that it could impact the Australian industry.