UQ researcher Prof Ian Godwin, GRDC’s Prof Craig Baillie and QAAFI director Prof Matthew Morell. Photo: David Capernick

THE GRAINS Research and Development Corporation and The University of Queensland have entered into a Sorghum Strategic Alliance designed to deliver better quality higher yielding and more resilient varieties of the key summer crop.

Announced today at the TropAg Conference in Brisbane, the alliance will run for seven years, and has kicked off with a $13-million investment from GRDC, with significant co-investment from UQ.

In announcing the alliance, GRDC general manager applied research, development and extension Professor Craig Baillie said GRDC had partnered with UQ because it had been at the heart of sorghum breeding in Australia for decades, with more than 90 percent of hybrid grain sorghum grown today in Australia containing genetics developed by UQ and the Qld Department of Primary Industries.

Director of UQ’s Qld Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation head Matthew Morell said the alliance would allow the organisation to deliver real-world solutions for Australian agriculture.

“We have some of the world’s most outstanding quantitative plant breeders, and the Sorghum Strategic Alliance will allow us to bring on some early or mid-career researchers in crop genomics, agronomy and farming systems to further strengthen our international standing in plant breeding,” Prof Morell said.

QAAFI researcher Ian Godwin said the alliance joins up a number of projects under the one umbrella,

“That’s a powerful thing that we can do for Queensland and northern New South Wales farming systems.”

Through GRDC’s Northern Australia projects, the alliance also has potential to bring benefits to farming systems involving cotton and other crops in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, and in the Northern Territory.

Australia is one of the world’s largest sorghum growers and exporters, and its appeal to China, the destination for the vast majority of its exports, means it has priced itself out of many pig, poultry, and beef rations.

Prof Godwin said research with broiler chicken rations containing high-protein sorghum at around 15-16pc, well above the current 10pc or so, augured well for the red grain.

“It can make a feed ration using half the normal soybean meal,” Prof Godwin said, adding that could generate savings for chicken producers.

Prof Godwin said after harvest, half the sorghum plant’s biomass was left in the paddock, and that had potential to become a feedstock for biofuel.

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