Tag Archives: farming

2019, Australia-China Collaboration

More wheat, less water

China and Australia can dramatically boost wheat yields and improve food security by unlocking the genetic potential within the hundreds of wheat varieties grown in the two countries. That’s the promise of the latest collaboration between wheat researchers in the two countries.

Chinese farmers have been growing wheat for at least 4,000 years. Crop yields per hectare are now nearly 10 times higher than in 1960 and China is now the largest wheat producer in the world. But wheat researchers say we can do more.

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2016, Australia-Indonesia Collaboration

Citizen science recovering volcanic farmlands

An Indonesian initiative is putting science—and the laboratory—into the hands of communities; combining the arts, science, and technology with some basic science lessons for the general public.

In 2014, the HackteriaLab gathering in Yogyakarta brought 40 scientists, artists, and academics together for two weeks to work on existing local community projects.

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2012

Granular plant protection

A farmer whose onion paddock is hit by the fungal disease “white rot” faces the loss not only of that crop but of productive use of the field for several years. Relief could be at hand, however, thanks to a novel granulated fungicide now being tested in the field in Victoria.

A new granulated fungicide will help onion farmers treat white rot. Credit: iStockphoto

“In the case of white rot, there is no existing commercially acceptable treatment and if a farmer has an infestation in their field they can’t use it for onions or similar crops for up to 15 years,” says Anthony Flynn, managing director of the agricultural chemical research company Eureka! AgResearch. “They’ve just had to move the crop on to the next paddock.”

The new granulated fungicide targets the soil-borne fungus Sclerotium cepivorum.
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