The Rice CRC sits within an existing network of research, development and service structures impacting on rice production and resource use in the southern irrigation areas. These groups include research, extension and education service providers, regulatory authorities, irrigation suppliers, community groups such as Land and Water Management Plan groups and industry organisations. There have also been active links with international organisations at various levels.
The role of the Rice CRC is to establish new links or to enhance those that have not been strong in the past.
Strong links are important to ensure cooperation across all levels from natural resource use to marketing of end-product. The Rice CRC does not operate in isolation from either more applied research and development activities or the day-to-day operations of the industry. It is linked to the existing community and industry infrastructure in a way that aims to ensure a seamless two-way exchange between the theoretical and the practical application of technology (Figure 1).
Cooperative links have been fostered internally, with outside organisations within Australia and internationally.
Figure 1
The Rice CRC has continued to foster new links between organisations and to enhance those already established. The level of cooperation is extensive. Some examples are provided below.
Many of the projects in Program 1, for example, have links with other projects which range from occasional interaction to full collaboration. For example:-
Project 1205 "Quantifying and maximising the benefits of crops after rice" is directly linked with Project 1206 "Using models to determine the benefits of wheat after rice", and both are linked with Project 6201 "Economic evaluation of alternative resource management strategies in a risky environment".
Results from Project 1205 are being used to assist the model development and understanding of groundwater dynamics in Projects 1201 "On-farm net recharge management" and 1403 "Quantifying climatic and management impacts on shallow watertables and soil salinity".
Many of the projects in Program l have strong links with the regional irrigation companies - Murray Irrigation Ltd, Coleambally Irrigation, and Murrumbidgee Irrigation Ltd. This is particularly the case for Projects 1102, 1201 and 1403, while Project 1105 is also developing similar links.
There is a different level of internal cooperation in the groups working on cold tolerance in Programs 2 and 3. There are groups working on tolerance at the plant level (NSW Agriculture and the University of Queensland); plant reaction at the cellular level (University of Sydney); genetic control of cold tolerance (CSIRO Plant Industry) and protein responses to cold (Australian National University). All groups working on this important problem have met twice in the past year. This has ensured no overlap in the work but has also encouraged a high level of cooperation.
Cooperation between participants in Program 4 and the cereals groups at NSW Agriculture, the University of Sydney, the University of NSW and Charles Sturt University has improved during the year. This is an important advance and will bring benefits to all groups.
The annual Rice CRC Symposium provides an ideal opportunity for all participants to interact, to share in the total program and to form a Rice CRC culture. The Symposium is important in an organisation such as the Rice CRC whose participants are geographically distributed both within and between Programs. The Symposium also provides an opportunity for Programs to hold group meetings. The format of the Symposium has been successful in generating a spirit of cooperation and a greater understanding of the scope of the work being carried out by the CRC.
The Symposium also featured a presentation by Prof Alan Devonshire, IACR-Rothamsted, who has been visiting the CSIRO Entomology bioremediation group from August 1999 until July 2000 and is a world expert in the area of pesticide biochemistry and resistance.
Additional Program meetings have been held for Programs 1, 2.1, 3.3, 4 and 5. These have been supplemented by specific workshops on salinity, water use efficiency and water quality.
The Chairman's Tour (formerly referred to as the "Induction Tour") was held in March 2000. It provided an ideal opportunity for all Rice CRC participants to meet in an informal setting to discuss issues of common interest and broaden their knowledge of the CRC and the rice industry in general. The tour covered two days, with a social gathering on one evening. One of the main objectives of the tour was to provide an environment for staff to meet others working in different areas of the CRC and establish opportunities for networking and collaboration. This year's tour was held in conjunction with the annual Rice Field Day at Jerilderie which gave participants access to research information being produced by other major research providers, in addition to the CRC.
Rice CRC members are invited to contribute to our internal newsletter, the Rice CiRCle, which is distributed to all participants. Three newsletters were distributed in the last financial year. A revised version of this newsletter, the Rice CRC Update, is also circulated to all rice growers to keep them abreast of developments within the CRC and its research.
The Rice CRC has worked actively with many other organisations with an interest in rice research and development.
Many rice research projects are funded through RIRDC. Some links are maintained between the CRC and the Rice Research and Development Committee of RIRDC to ensure coordination of projects.
At the Program level there are also close links to ensure harmony across the spectrum of research.
Participants in the Rice CRC have actively sought opportunities with organisations that are not part of the core structure. Some of these have been through postgraduate studentships while others have been through mutual research interest. These additional links have included participants from:-
Australian National University |
cold tolerance |
University of Queensland |
cold tolerance |
University of New South Wales |
rice quality; regional salinity prediction modelling |
University of Wollongong |
rice quality |
University of Technology, Sydney |
groundwater and salinity dynamics |
Strong external links have been made across all Programs. Some examples for Program 1 are provided below.
Contact has been established with researchers in the Queensland sugar industry who are similarly interested in undertaking research on rapid, quantitative diagnosis of sodic soil conditions in the field (1102).
The project looking at optimising agronomic options at the farm scale (1201) is closely linked with related modelling and field projects with Murray Irrigation Ltd, LWRRDC and Coleambally Irrigation.
The project investigating bioremediation of pesticide residues in drainage waters (1303) has links with the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, the CRC for Sustainable Cotton Production, the Horticultural Research and Development Corporation and the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.
Project 1403 - "quantifying climatic and management impacts on soil salinity and shallow watertables", has established links with Dr Simon Cook (Leader, CSIRO Precision Agriculture Group, CSIRO Land and Water, Perth). Dr Cook will provide technical expert advice and input on spatial salinity issues and participate in the technical workshops/meetings of the Rice CRC. This project also has strong links with NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation groundwater workers not directly involved in the Rice CRC.
Ms Julia Humphries, PhD student from Department of Plant Science, Waite Campus, University of Adelaide spoke to Yanco Agricultural Institute and Rice CRC staff on 22 June, 2000. Her presentation was titled: "Beta Carotene in Wheat and Rice". This was an extension of cooperation with the University of Adelaide group on minerals and rice (Program 2).
International links have been fostered through ACIAR projects, funded visits, visitor exchange and through contact with the many international visitors to the CRC administration office and its partner organisations.
Dr Janet Taylor (Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council of Canada, Saskatoon, Sasketchewan, Canada) spent time with Dr Gavin Ash (Charles Sturt University) working on host specificity of Rhynchosporium alismatis. This visit was worthwhile in developing links on this area of pest management.
Dr Toshihiro Hasegawa is an Associate Professor at Hokkaido University and has research interests in cold tolerance, root growth and crop modelling. He worked with Mr Robert Williams and Mr Tim Farrell at Yanco from February 15 to March 30, 2000. Dr Hasegawa is a highly respected rice scientist in Japan working in Hokkaido, an area of Japan that suffers significant low temperature injury.
Future collaborative work with Dr Hasegawa will build on the gains made in a number of areas during his stay in Australia. These gains include Japanese data on the comparison of cold water and cold air screening, effect of root mass on cold tolerance, the physiology of low soil and water temperature on rice growth in the early stage and modelling the impact of N status on rice yield. Dr Hasegawa presented his research work at the CRC Cold Tolerance workshop, CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Canberra and at Yanco Agricultural Institute.
During his stay Dr Hasegawa successfully tuned his rice growth model to Australian conditions. The model was able to identify key differences between Australian and Japanese varieties in response to nitrogen fertiliser. Recovery of nitrogen applied pre-flood and at panicle initiation is 70% and 30% respectively in Australia, whereas the reverse occurs in Japan. This pattern captures the major differences between optimum nitrogen management in Australia compared to Japan. Continued modelling work will assist in the development of the soil nitrogen test in Program 2.1.
Dr Richard Tester from the Glasgow Caledonian University is collaborating with Assoc Prof Kevin Robards and Dr Stuart Helliwell (Charles Sturt University) on a project looking at starch-lipid interactions and their role in ageing processes in rice (4504). Dr Tester has extensive experience in starch chemistry where his specialty is the relationship between starch structure and its relationship to starch functionality. He brings to the project specific expertise in characterising glucans and their interactions with starch granules. His work has led to a far greater understanding of how starch components interact during biosynthesis and the molecular basis for gelatinisation properties. His collaboration is essential to the timely completion of the project.
Dr Shahbaz Khan is undertaking collaborative research in spatial hydrologic economic modelling of rice-based irrigation systems with members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Links have been established with Prof Dennis McLachlan's group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA and Prof Wolfgang Kinzelbach's group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH, Switzerland with regard to the project looking at quantifying climatic and management impacts on soil salinity and shallow watertables (1403).
Prof Jim Oster (University of California) reviewed and largely agreed with approaches being developed in the rice land suitability assessment project (1102).
CSIRO Land and Water is developing a link with the Department of Agricultural Economics, University of the Orange Free State, South Africa in regard to their project on "optimising agronomic options at the farm scale" (1201).
Dr Shaohui Xu, a visiting scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences - Nanjing Institute of Soil Science, spent two months at Griffith sponsored by the CSIRO/CAS agreement. He and Dr Shahbaz Khan developed a program to determine soil water fluxes which is being applied to the "Crops after rice" Project (Projects 1205, 1403).
Dr Manoranjan Mondal from the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute visited Griffith for six weeks to undertake training in SWAGMAN Destiny. He then used the findings from model simulations to assist in the design of field experiments in an area of Bangladesh affected by coastal salinity. His visit was funded by The Crawford Fund with links to Project 1206 and the related ACIAR project.
Prof Alan Devonshire, IACR-Rothamsted, a world expert in the area of pesticide biochemistry and resistance, has been working with the CSIRO Entomology Bioremediation group.
The Cell Biology Group at the University of Sydney has obtained materials from researchers overseas to carry out some of their work. Antibodies raised against beta-1,3-glucanases have been obtained from Dr Michel Legrand's group at the Institut de Biologie Moleculaire des Plantes, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Strasbourg, France and will be used in the investigation into callose dissolution in rice anthers. A cutinase enzyme to be trialed for speeding up penetration of physiological dyes into live anther cells has been obtained from Prof Maarten Egmond at Unilever Research Laboratories in the Netherlands (3202).
Dr Darshan Brar from IRRI has offered to provide their collection of interspecifics and backcross materials in tissue culture, as part of the 2000-2003 postgraduate studentship to work on "Microspore culture of rice for rapid breeding and enhanced levels of interspecific recombination". It has been agreed with IRRI that Dr Xiaochun Zhao will spend a week at IRRI learning about the program and bring back to Australia in vitro F1 and BC1 lines involving crosses of O. sativa (AA) with wild species having BB, CC, BBCC, EE, FF, GG, and HHJJ genomes, which are highly sterile. In January 2000, approval to import this collection into Australia was received from AQIS (3301).
A collaborative international link is also being sought between the Rice CRC and the Rice Research Institute of Yunnan Agricultural University (PRC). Dr Zhao was trained at this University and is familiar with the germplasm, much of which is adapted to cool mountainous land at 1900 metres above sea level. Dr Zhao may travel to Yunnan province at the same time as he travels to IRRI in the Philippines.
Links have been maintained with ACIAR Project 95/100 "Plant breeding strategies for rainfed lowland rice in north-east Thailand and Laos". This project is managed by Assoc Prof Shu Fukai, University of Queensland. The involvement of the Rice CRC was through studies on genotype-by-environment interactions for phenology (ACIAR Sub-Program 5) and particularly focused on cold-by-nitrogen interactions. There is to be an involvement of the CRC in a follow-up project in Laos and Cambodia.
Project 1106 is also the Australian component of ACIAR Project no. 9432 "Nutrient and irrigation management for sustainable rice-wheat cropping systems in Bangladesh and Australia". Other partners in this project are The University of Melbourne (c/- Prof David Connor, Project Leader), the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (c/- Dr Panaullah) and the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (c/- Dr Razzaque).
Project 1403 has links with Dr Prathapar's group, International Water Management Institute, through a project on conjunctive water management in Pakistan and Australia funded by CSIRO, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), ACIAR and Coleambally Irrigation Corporation. The Australian component is led by Dr Evan Christen, CSIRO Land and Water.
Many of the visits by international scientists have been discussed in earlier sections. These include:-
Other visitors were:-
|
Dr Toshihiro Hasegawa from Hokkaido University visited Yanco during the 1999/2000 rice season |
Overseas visits by staff from the Rice CRC included:-
|
Low temperature screening at Hokkaido Central Prefectural Research Station. The roof closes and the air coolers reduce the air temperature to a constant 20º C from panicle initiation to flowering. |
The following table identifies linkages established within Rice CRC projects.
Project No. |
Chief Investigators |
Linkages |
1102 |
NSW Agriculture |
Murray Irrigation Limited |
1104 |
NSW Agriculture |
Coleambally Irrigation Corporation |
1105 |
CSIRO Land and Water |
NSW Agriculture |
1107 |
NSW Agriculture |
CSIRO Land and Water |
1201 |
CSIRO Land and Water |
Coleambally Irrigation Corporation |
1202 |
Dept. of Land and Water Conservation |
|
1204 |
NSW Agriculture |
|
1205 |
CSIRO Land and Water |
|
1206 |
CSIRO Land and Water |
ACIAR Project 9432 |
1301/1302 |
CSIRO Land and Water |
Projects in development |
1303 |
CSIRO Entomology |
Cotton Research and Development Corporation |
1401(a) |
Dept. of Land and Water Conservation |
|
1401(b) |
Dept. of Land and Water Conservation |
CSIRO Land and Water |
1403 |
CSIRO Land and Water |
Murrumbidgee Irrigation Limited |
2101 |
Charles Sturt University |
CSIRO |
2102 |
Charles Sturt University |
NSW Agriculture |
2103 |
NSW Agriculture |
Charles Sturt University |
2105 |
NSW Agriculture |
|
2201 |
NSW Agriculture |
University of Queensland, linked to cold group |
2205 |
University of Queensland |
NSW Agriculture, linked to cold group |
2301 |
NSW Agriculture |
|
2302 |
NSW Agriculture |
The University of Sydney |
2303 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
NSW Agriculture |
2401 |
NSW Agriculture |
|
2402 |
NSW Agriculture |
|
2405 |
NSW Agriculture |
Charles Sturt University |
2406 |
NSW Agriculture |
Charles Sturt University |
3101 |
NSW Agriculture |
IRRI Philippines |
3102 |
CSIRO Plant Industry |
NSW Agriculture |
3201/3204 |
CSIRO Plant Industry |
Dr Deep Saini (Montreal), linked to cold group |
3202 |
The University of Sydney |
NSW Agriculture |
3203 |
CSIRO Entomology |
NSW Agriculture |
3301 |
The University of Sydney |
NSW Agriculture |
3401 |
NSW Agriculture |
Charles Sturt University |
3402 |
NSW Agriculture |
Charles Sturt University |
3403 |
Charles Sturt University |
NSW Agriculture |
4101 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
|
4201 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
CSIRO Stored Grains Research Laboratory |
4301 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
University of New South Wales |
4401 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
|
4501 |
The University of Sydney |
BRI Australia Limited |
4502 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
|
4503 |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
|
4504 |
Charles Sturt University |
Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited |
5101 |
NSW Agriculture |
CRC participants |
5201 |
Charles Sturt University |
Coleambally Irrigation Corporation |
5301 |
NSW Agriculture |
Links to education |
5401 |
Charles Sturt University |
NSW Agriculture |
5504 |
Charles Sturt University |
School of Biomedical Sciences, Charles Sturt University |
6201 |
NSW Agriculture |
Coleambally Irrigation Corporation |
