Research staff quietly do their bit to support Australian agriculture

On Friday, October 6, the Tamworth Agricultural Institute (TAI) marked 75 years of research and development on the site and opened the gates to the wider community to promote the work being done at the centre.

TAI is the NSW Department of Primary Industries' (DPI) principal research institute for the cropping zone of northern inland NSW, and a Centre of Excellence for Northern Farming Systems dedicated to helping ensure agricultural industries and rural communities remain economically viable and sustainable.

Institute director Dr Guy McMullen said farmers were "at the centre of everything we do", with the emphasis on improving cropping systems and keeping them safe from threats of disease and weeds.

"Our programs deliver research results directly to the grower not just around Tamworth but right across the northern region," he said.

"A really good example is the work our pathology team does around diagnostics and surveillance with growers and agronomist from across the North West, Central West - we even have the same program in Southern NSW.

"A grower or agronomist can bring in a sample they think might have some disease problems or where assistance is required to clarify what the disease issue is, and our pathology team will provide feedback directly to the grower or agronomist in terms of what they've got, and what are the best management strategies for the disease depending on the timing and seasonal conditions."

Research programs at TAI are co-funded with one of the agriculture sector's research and development corporations (RDCs), such as the Grains RDC or Cotton RDC, which help to identify priorities or critical issues through their grower networks, Dr McMullen said.

TAI also works collaboratively on projects with CSIRO and the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.

At a local level, Dr McMullen said grower committees and agronomists played an important role in helping direct research, in terms of crop choice and review of the R and D outcomes.

Tamworth's agricultural research centre was established in 1948, and has had a number of names in the years since, although Dr McMullen said TAI was the "most enduring name".

He said the research centre was formed as Australia headed into what was known as the 'green revolution' - a period when technology and innovation underpinned many agricultural advances.

"We had a range of exciting new wheat genetics and there was more widespread use of nitrogenous fertilisers like urea which together really lifted the yield potential of wheat varieties," Dr McMullen said.

"During this period TAI provided local evaluation of new crop varieties, in particular wheat varieties that were being developed at the Glen Innes Research Station, as well as those coming out of Wagga Wagga Agricultural Institute.

"It was all about providing evaluation of those varieties under the agronomic production systems of this part of the world."

As research requirements evolved, so did TAI's focus on pathology and entomology, then into farming systems and crop nutrition.

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Conservation farming was also becoming more predominant as people recognised the implications of soil degradation, and Dr McMullen said the research institute's interest widened to encompass conservation farming and no till farming practises.

"TAI and a range of other research organisations, but particularly those for Northern NSW, really helped develop the no-till farming system now used in almost all of Northern NSW, and on which systems used in other areas are based on, particularly the research into alternative crops to grow in rotation with wheat," he said.

"One of the biggest challenges with no-till cropping is diseases like crown rot, stubble borne diseases and weed management.

"Our research into crop rotation was important as it has provided farmers with long-term, sustainable no-till farming systems.

"That work happened over a long period of time and eventually led to the development of the chick pea breeding program which is still housed here at Tamworth today.

"This is now is a national chickpea breeding program that has delivered elite varieties of chickpeas which make up more than 90 per cent of the chickpeas grown, not just in NSW but in Queensland and other chickpea producing states as well."

Thanks to new technology, adopted through the support of the GRDC and NSW Government, Dr McMullen said the modern TAI chickpea breeding breeding program was now considered a world-leading pulse breeding program.

While chickpeas would always remain an important focus for the research centre, Dr McMullen said future programs were looking to address climate variability and drought preparedness, and the increasing need for growers to adapt to the extreme variations in our climate.

"We've recently started a couple of key programs in that space," he said.

"One, in particular, is evaluating new traits that give us more flexibility in wheat cropping systems, looking at long coleoptile wheats which are able to be sown deeper in the soil and provide a better buffer for variable soil moisture conditions, or allow the grower to chase moisture in a dry season for crop establishment."

TAI is also involved in a national project with CSIRO to evaluate where nitrogen loss is occurring in our systems.

Dr McMullen said TAI's senior research scientist Dr Graeme Schwenke was looking at nitrogen volatilisation in the environment, which is the loss of applied nitrogen to the atmosphere as ammonia gas, resulting in a cost to growers.

He sad the process also had a large footprint in terms of the greenhouse gas and energy use in cropping systems.

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