R&D spend declines

This was something which concerned Professor and director of global research strategies at the University of Minnesota, US, Phil Pardey, who spoke at this week's International Wheat Conference in Sydney where he said leaving the job of research solely to the private sector was not the answer.

He said wheat rust was getting ahead of funds-starved plant breeders and researchers in many countries, hindering them in the race to continually develop strains with resistance to the ever evolving fungus.

He said by withdrawing public sector funding from pre-commercialisation research, governments were also hindering private sector progress, because the private sector relied on pre-breeding work to develop the germplasm for its new varieties.

In terms of total dollars, he said global rust research needed about $108 million, but was currently estimated at about half that.

"Australia, like the US and the UK has been disinvesting itself generally in food and ag research and development for about a decade," he said.

"Australia is no longer in the top 10 of food and ag R&D spenders in the world."

He said some of the revival of spending in areas like stem rust in the past five years had actually been from non-traditional donors, such as the Gates Foundation, but they couldn't maintain their support.

"The nature of these problems are that they're never ending. We've had rust around since we invented wheat 10,000 years ago, so modern science isn't going to solve that," Professor Pardey said.