Tropical Plant Protection Research centre opened

A new research centre with a strong focus on Northern Australia's plant-based agriculture industries will be launched in Brisbane this week.

The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Tropical Plant Protection is being formed under a federal government program and will be based at the University of Queensland's St Lucia campus.

Executive director of the CRC Professor John Irwin said the aim of the centre was to direct Australian expertise towards innovative and improved management of diseases, pests and weeds of tropical crops.

"Northern Australia's crop and pasture-based livestock industries lose up to $1.5 billion per year in failed production and the cost of pest and disease management," Professor Irwin said.

"The centre will use recent breakthroughs in plant biotechnology to develop new diagnostic tools for implementation of improved disease prevention strategies and the breeding of improved disease resistant plant varieties.

"The outcomes of these advances will provide significant economic returns and reduced reliance on chemicals for the Australian industry," he said.

Disease resistance outcomes will be delivered with the help of RhoBio, the CRC's industry partner, which has the research and development capacity to facilitate delivery to market of disease resistance technologies.

This new centre builds on the success of the CRC for Tropical Plant Pathology, which was based at the University of Queensland from 1992 to 1999.

The nine organisations contributing to the new CRC for Tropical Plant Protection are The University of Queensland, the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, CSIRO , the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, RhoBio, the Northern Territory University, the Australian National University, the Northern Territory Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australia (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, and the National Office of Animal and Plant Health).

These orgnisations are providing $8 million a year to the centre, which will be supplemented by $13.9 million in Commonwealth Government funding over the next seven years. The centre will be launched by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Warren Entsch on Wednesday, November 22.

For more information contact Professor John Irwin 07 3365 2790 or Peter McCutcheon at UQ Communications on 07 3365 1088 or email: communications@mailbox.uq.edu.au