Announced by GRDC chair Sharon Starick on February 24, the Weed Management Initiative aims to provide sustainable and effective weed management strategies through four nodes, ensuring both national collaboration and regional specificity.
The 5.5-year initiative will bring Australia’s leading researchers and communications and extension specialists together to work on innovative, cutting-edge weed management research, development and extension.
Under the initiative, GRDC will invest $25 million to create regional nodes with strategic partnerships and $22 million in co-contributions from University of Western Australia, University of Adelaide, Charles Sturt University and University of Queensland.
The WMI will also support more than 20 weed research scientists, working under experienced node leads, as well as 12 new PhD student scholarships to build critical capacity in this field.
Mrs Starick said the WMI was a critical investment that GRDC was making on behalf of Australian grain growers and built on three decades of weed RD&E.
“Conservatively, weeds impose an annual cost on growers of approximately $4.1 billion in lost production and control measures. This equates to around $196 per hectare,” she said.
“This financial burden is exacerbated by the rapid evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds, limited availability of new chemical control options, and shifting climatic conditions affecting weed distribution and frequency.
“Not only will this initiative help reduce the economic impact of weeds on our farming systems, it will also foster a collaborative research environment capable of responding swiftly to emerging challenges.”
There will be one regional node in Western Australia, one in the southern region (South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria) based in Adelaide, and two in the northern region (Queensland and NSW) — catering for the summer and winter cropping systems.
Mrs Starick said this federated approach would build on GRDC’s long-term investment in integrated weed management and ensure there was a well-resourced and interconnected research community, and cohesion in national efforts across RD&E.
Five programs will be delivered through the WMI that span the continuum of herbicide resistance from evolutionary dynamics to on-the-ground mitigation strategies, communications and extension along with capacity building and succession planning.
