Agriculture and Food Minister Terry Redman today announced the establishment of a world-class export grains innovation centre at Murdoch.
This would be complemented by a new project, ‘New Crops for New Climate Environments’, to evaluate and adopt the world’s best genetic technology into WA farming systems.
The State Government has committed $30million over three years towards the construction of a world class grains innovation centre and will be encouraging grain technology partners to join in the centre’s development.
“This centre of research excellence will help underpin and expand growth of the State’s $4.5billion grains industry and will make a major contribution to national grains research,” Mr Redman said.
“National and international expertise will be brought together with a major focus on grain quality and market competitiveness, biosecurity and productivity by creating a cluster of research excellence and training facilities.
“It will also encourage industry involvement with researchers and commercial partners in a far more powerful way.”
The ‘New Crops for New Climate Environments’ project will include Government investment of $9.05million over four years, including $3million towards the construction of new facilities at Merredin and Katanning. The project will focus on the evaluation of genetically modified traits with the potential to improve productivity, resilience and quality of WA crops facing increased climate variability and more discerning markets.
“Two climate simulator facilities will be established at Merredin and Katanning to evaluate future GM crops in a controlled environment,” the Minister said.
“The initial projects will focus on improved crop genetics to tackle climatic stresses such as frosts or droughts.”
Mr Redman said evidence from the United States indicated the application of GM technologies could deliver productivity gains of one per cent annually over 20 years.
“This translates into an additional $30million each and every year for the WA grains industry alone,” he said.
“This work will provide Government and industry with a practical understanding of the appropriate policies and protocols required for this new technology.”
The Government will also invest $3.2million in 2010-11 into the recently announced project ‘Bridging the Yield Gap’. This project aims to deliver an increase of two million tonnes of grain per annum and sustain grain industry productivity growth in the higher rainfall areas of the State.
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