Symposium

The pressing need to dramatically increase crop yields to meet global demand has resulted in several initiatives to improve photosynthetic performance. This symposium will explore avenues under active research and present an update on progress with particular emphasis on field application. The symposium will feature research on the biochemistry and genetic underpinning of photosynthetic pathways in major crop species, opportunities for manipulating those pathways, advanced phenotyping to seek natural variation in photosynthetic traits in breeding populations, and advanced cross-scale modelling to quantify likely consequences in field-production environments of potential photosynthetic modifications.

In this symposium we will discuss the integration of sorghum genomic and phenomic information to inform our understanding of key traits and our use of this information to produce better sorghum varieties. The topics covered will attract researchers from grain crops more broadly.

Genomic selection is a technology that has been widely adopted in animal and plant breeding, leading to accelerated genetic gains and faster variety development. In this symposium, speakers will describe how genomic selection has transformed the industries they work with, what they see as the future for genomic selection (including integrating disciplines as diverse as crop modelling and meat science), and how genomic selection can be applied in new species. The symposium will be sponsored by GeneSeek, a Neogen company which genotypes millions of animals for genomic selection each year (Stewart Bauck contact).

The United Nations’ International Year of Pulses in 2016 raised global awareness of the importance of tropical-pulse legumes for healthy farm systems, healthy foods and healthy people—especially in increasingly unpredictable climates. Future demands for more profitable, productive and resilient tropical-pulse crops are only likely to increase.

Despite recent successes, the challenge remains to bridge the gap between the potential for tropical pulses to meet global challenges and the research capacity and capabilities required to realise this potential. New and emerging research innovations in genetics, biotechnology, plant physiology, agronomy and scientific knowledge provide a clear path forward for delivering options to better manage seasonal variability; and drought, pest, disease and weed challenges.

TropAg2017 provides an ideal opportunity to showcase the likely future for tropical pulses and the transformative research that will allow these crops to deliver their full potential. This symposium will bring together experts to discuss likely markets, sustainability challenges and research opportunities, together with clear strategies for reliably enhancing pulse productivity to meet future food and nutritional targets.

Food production is a constant demand of the world’s increasing population. Mitigating environmental impacts, reducing carbon footprints and producing more in less area are important for creating more sustainable agriculture. Global climate changes currently threaten these goals through many adverse conditions, such as water stress by excess (waterlogging or flooding) or scarcity (drought), cold and metal stress. As a consequence of climate changes the number of affected areas has increased along with the intensity of these stresses. To overcome these challenges, we need to develop stress-resilient crops. This symposium will discuss molecular, physiological and epigenetic mechanisms, as well as novel tools to phenotype, map and generate useful variability, which may be the keys to achieving tolerance to these stresses.

Sugarcane is a very productive plant because it utilises the C4 pathway of photosynthesis. This allows the plant to support high rates of growth (biomass accumulation) and accumulating carbon in sugar (sucrose) and fibre (cell walls) in the stalk over a wide range of environmental conditions. Despite its enormous potential as a crop plant for sugar and biomass production and as an energy crop, continuous gains in genetic potential have been low during the past three decades. In addition, inefficiencies in the crop-production system increasingly place the environmental footprint of production under scrutiny. This symposium will look at the photosynthetic-nitrogen-use efficiency of sugarcane, gene discovery and plasticity in leaf and culm metabolism (transcriptome, proteasome and metabolome), progress towards developing a sugarcane genome sequence, and high-throughput phenotyping as ways to realise the full potential of the crop.

Specific topics that will be addressed include:

• Photosynthetic-nitrogen-use efficiency in sugarcane
• Licence to farm—nitrogen-efficient sugarcane production
• Control of sucrose and fibre: insights from the sugarcane transcriptome analyses
• Application of high-throughput phenomics for sugarcane-trait development
• Sensitivity and plasticity of sugarcane-leaf metabolism during stress
• The sugarcane genome sequence; applications for sugarcane improvement.

It is estimated that more than 7 million plant/crop accessions are stored in gene banks globally. These accessions exhibit a wealth of diversity that could provide the fundamental building blocks for future crop improvement to help address key issues such as food and nutritional security. This symposium will showcase efforts from around the world that are utilising cutting-edge research and applying new technologies and approaches to promote better use of tropical-crop genetic diversity for future food security.

The aim of this symposium is to outline the importance of plant health in horticulture to Queensland, Australia and the world with regards to economic development, employment and human health. Using important tropical and subtropical horticultural crops as examples, the speakers will outline the scale of the problems and discuss novel research strategies including breeding, genetics, and genomics linked to novel disease-management strategies. Links between horticulture, and human health and nutrition will be emphasised.

This symposium will explore market-driven approaches to plant breeding that take into account the needs and preferences of all actors in crop-value chains, from farmers through to consumers. Focusing on market demands rather than just on crop traits and new technologies leads to new varieties that have the potential to achieve higher rates of adoption by farmers and their value chains. This symposium draws on experiences from both public- and private-sector breeding programs that have applied these approaches to the development of tropical horticultural crops that are important for income and nutrition both in Australia and in emerging economies in Africa and Southeast Asia. The symposium includes examples of new-variety development of tomatoes and custard apples in Queensland, tomatoes in Ghana, and beans in several countries in East and Southern Africa; and variety performance profiling of vegetables to enable links to seed systems in Africa and Southeast Asia. The symposium will also discuss new ways of financing plant breeding to provide greater sustainability of tropical-crop-improvement programmes in developing countries.

This symposium focuses on the application of the latest earth-observation technologies for agricultural- and horticultural-farming systems. This includes an overview of results achieved across a range of industries, using in-field robotics, and satellite-based and UAV- (unmanned aerial vehicle) based sensing technologies. Applications presented extend from the individual crop to the national level and include crop-yield forecasting, determining crop management and stress, nutrient and fruit-quality mapping, and disease detection.

Biofortification is the process of increasing the phytonutrient or mineral concentration in the edible portions of plants while they are actively growing. Increase in nutrient concentration can be achieved through genetic improvement, agronomic manipulation, exposure to different environments, or a combination of these techniques. Although much research has been directed at improving the phytonutrient content of the staple crops of developing countries and addressing the health issues of these regions, there is now increased interest in biofortification of horticultural products that targets the very different health issues of the urban middle class. Horticultural crops are often colourful, flavoursome and generally seen as healthy. They are consequently an ideal vehicle for maintaining or increasing good health. This symposium addresses some of the horticultural crops that are currently undergoing biofortification and the issues that are being overcome to achieve potential increases in dietary health.

Tropical and subtropical orchards produce a large range of high-value fruits and nuts but there are many constraints to profitability. This symposium will focus on research on improving profitability through increases in yield and product quality for important crops including mango, macadamia, avocado, peach and oil palm. Research areas will include tree management and architecture, harvest and post-harvest, pollination and breeding.

Investment in and recognition of the livestock sector is rarely commensurate with its importance in the global economy—it produces 40% of agricultural GDP (gross domestic product) but receives less than 5% of agricultural ODA (official development assistance)—and its importance in addressing sustainable development, not least nourishing the world (as the theme of the conference). The first part of this session will provide an opportunity to consider the global context for the livestock sector, with three short presentations on: livestock systems, organising priorities for research and delivering science solutions. The second part of the session will explore three examples of advanced livestock science that are relevant for delivering sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The symposium will highlight opportunities for the livestock sector to contribute to SDGs, considering the need for science solutions in the context of sustainable intensification and improving resilience in the livestock systems of developing countries. Specific examples of innovative new research results accompanied by case studies will demonstrate the opportunities for transformative change on the ground. New advances in livestock genetics, the intersection of human and animal health, and opportunities to mitigate livestock sector’s environmental footprint will be explored individually and in the context of integrated delivery at scale.

Participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussions exploring the crucial elements linking livestock-science discovery to delivery that result in transformative development outcomes.

Research in agriculture has focussed on the development of disease diagnostic methods for both plant and animal pathogens. Improved diagnosis can lead to better management of diseases caused by viruses, fungi, bacteria and/or parasites. Successful molecular diagnostic methods have been adopted by laboratories and/or commercialised – these have usually been based on polymerase chain reaction technologies. Increased knowledge of pathogen genomes has enabled the development of many specific molecular diagnostic assays. Emerging technologies include the introduction ‘point of care’ or ‘crush side’ diagnostic methods to enable producers to manage diseases quickly with the appropriate treatment as applicable. This will revolutionise industries currently relying upon expert laboratory analysis before management decisions can be made. This symposium will showcase future technologies and adopted technologies to demonstrate the ‘dream’ and the ‘reality’.

Recent advances in genomics, including high-throughput sequencing, low-cost genotyping and genome editing, are beginning to have a large impact on livestock production and the potential for enhancing tropical beef-and-dairy production is enormous. In this symposium, speakers from industry and research institutes will give a wide range of examples to demonstrate how genomic technologies are impacting on livestock industries worldwide. The symposium will also consider how genomic technologies can be used to meet the challenges of producing high-value protein (from meat and milk) in a changing climate. The symposium will conclude with a particular focus on the potential for tropical-livestock production. The session will be sponsored by IIlumina Australia Pty Ltd (Eli Mrkusich contact).

This symposium will examine a key issue that is confronting intensive animal-production systems—the development of antimicrobial resistance. The speakers will address the issue from multiple angles (e.g., the international and the national; the laboratory and the field) and provide updates on current research activities.

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing primary industry globally and in the tropics it contributes to over 50% of current seafood consumption. It is also a major socio-economic mainstay with many tropical communities dependent on the industry’s production outcomes. Aquaculture in the tropics is a young industry with a number of challenges to address if it is to continue its growth trajectory. Some of these challenges include lowering the reliance on marine-derived feed ingredients, shifting from monocultures to multi-trophic production systems, increasing efficiency and lowering its environmental footprint. The aquaculture session will include presentations from world leaders in tropical aquaculture, nutrition and sustainability, and others who will present on some of the challenges tropical aquaculture faces and the R&D that is being applied to address those challenges.

What happens in the rumen determines the efficiency of the animal, the amount of gases produced by ruminants, the protein value of the diet, and the capacity of the animal to cope with low-quality diets. These and other important issues will be discussed in this symposium, bringing together new ideas on how to enhance the efficiency of rumen fermentation in tropical systems.

The viability of the livestock industries requires the ability to demonstrate continuous improvement in the welfare of their animals. These industries now face an enormous non-traditional risk in the form of public concern over animal welfare. This symposium will explore the emerging animal-welfare issues in tropical production and how governments, researchers and producers can work together to find effective solutions to provide certainty in animal production while meeting our responsibilities for animals in our care.

Currently, close to 1 billion people suffer from hunger and food insecurity, which is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as not having enough food to live a healthy life (FAO, 2010). The problem of poor access to nutritious foods, which include animal-source foods, fruits and vegetables, biofortified staples, fortified foods and indigenous local crops, is even more daunting. Lack of diversity in diet is strongly associated with inadequate intake and the risk of deficiencies of essential micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc. Typically, this is seen in poor households that subsist on monotonous staple-based diets.

Globally there are 50 000 edible plants, of which but a few hundred contribute to food supplies. However, only three of these (maize, rice and wheat) provide 60% of the world’s food-energy intake, which indicates a dependency on a small number of crops. Micronutrient deficiencies have far-reaching health and nutrition consequences in both the short and the long term. The problem of lack of dietary diversification is compounded by the double burden of malnutrition, which needs to be considered where overweight and obesity are problems attributed to the types of foods consumed. Some of the interventions recommended are diversification of the agricultural system to include indigenous crops and micronutrition supplementation. This symposium will address these issues by looking at case studies of indigenous foods that have been used in diet diversification.

Globalisation of the food supply and the resulting complexity in supply chains has arguably increased regulatory challenges and risks to consumers. Food safety, food authentication and food adulteration are emerging topics within the food sector. They are major concerns not only for consumers but also for producers, distributors and authorities. Protecting the integrity of the food-supply chain is a considerable challenge but one which is of the utmost importance to protect the consumer. This encompasses the threats posed by microbiological and chemical contamination of the supply chain along with guaranteeing the authenticity of food products to combat fraudulent practices and to control adulteration for economic, food safety and cultural reasons. Ensuring the authenticity of food requires powerful and reliable tools for food analysis, traceability and control. This symposium will address some of the challenges faced by global food-supply chains.

Food is necessary to sustain life but the quality and type of food we consume and the interactions of food with our physiologies can tip the balance between health and illness. This symposium will highlight the contribution of sub(tropical) agri-food to the prevention of disease and, thus, to the health and wellbeing of global citizens. From the micronutrients to our microbiome, they all have a role to play in stabilising the multilayer and interconnected networks of human physiology. The transformation of these agri-foods into consumer products with added health benefits can impact not only on the health of consumers but also on the economic wellbeing of a country. Discussion may focus on region-specific diets and what each region can learn from others.

Rice is the major tropical crop in the world. This symposium will discuss the challenges to rice growing in the future; the sciences that are being applied to rice to create climate-ready varieties in the future; rice in northern Australia; and harnessing new science to understand the qualities of rice that consumers value. This symposium will appeal to many in the Asian region and also to Australians looking to invest in the opening up of northern Australia to tropical agriculture.

Sustainable intensification (SI) of agricultural systems is required to address the global challenges of increasing food production, enhancing environmental sustainability and improving the resilience of farming systems. The focus should be across all components of food security (availability, access and utilisation). SI will require holistic approaches that are focused on a complete system rather than on a single component. For adoption and scaling of SI practices it is critical for impacts to be measured across multiple domains (productivity, environment, economics, social and human condition). Research on SI requires transdisciplinary approaches to integrate social and natural sciences, using participatory approaches with clear pathways towards improving the health (soil, plant, animal and human) and livelihoods of people and communities. There have been significant investments by various donor agencies in programs associated with SI, for example, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research), CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) and other national programs. The goal of this symposium will be to bring together key stakeholders to share various approaches of the SI assessment framework that are being used to address food and nutritional security. Sharing success stories and understanding both the barriers to adoption and the value of a systems approach to document synergies and trade-offs will lead to effective collaboration, and active learning and adaptation of programs focused on SI.

There is renewed interest in expanded agricultural development in northern Australia, supported by an increasing global demand for food, the region’s proximity to Asian markets, and national policy initiatives to support economically sustainable and vibrant rural and regional communities. Irrigated agriculture in northern Australia has been a policy priority for over 100 years, which has met with both success and failure. What is different in the 21st century? This symposium will explore the opportunities and constraints associated with such development, including soil and water resources, agricultural production systems, economic and policy drivers, managing environmental impacts, value-chains and transport logistics.

Drought impacts on millions of people globally, especially those connected to agriculture. Drought-risk management in most parts of the world is still very reactive—responding to drought after it impacts is the norm. This approach to disaster management often is often untimely, poorly coordinated and fragmented (Carrão et al., 2016; Wilhite and Pulwarty, 2005).

Drought assistance often results in its recipients failing to develop adequate capabilities to manage future droughts by decreasing their self-reliance and increasing their dependence on government and donor organisations (Wilhite et al., 2014; Pulwarty and Sivakumar, 2014).

The ongoing challenge is to propose a new management paradigm for improved drought preparedness based on proactive drought-risk management. The approach should encompass:

• enhanced understanding of the natural features of drought and the factors that influence social and economic vulnerability
• recognition that making the most of good seasons is a key component of managing ensuing drought risks and improving drought preparedness. There is a need to develop effective drought-risk-management policies and to improve cooperation and coordination between business, industry, research organisations and governments.
• building the capacity of producers and supply-chain managers in applying advances in climate science for enhanced understanding of drought-risk and drought-mitigation options.

The aim of this symposium is to demonstrate and highlight recent global efforts to quantify drought risks and associated impacts, advances in climate science focused on drought extremes, innovative ways of managing and or transferring drought risks, and enhanced drought-risk-management frameworks and strategies for key drought-prone regions.

The imperative to intensify food and fibre production globally hangs in the delicate balance between what is needed and what is possible when the risks and trade-offs are considered. Significant effort has been invested in identifying productivity gaps, though surprisingly, little progress has been made on how to manage the multiple risks (e.g., climate, production, market) and trade-offs (e.g., economic—environmental—social objectives) associated with bridging them.

This symposium brings together a multidisciplinary group of national and international experts to answer the following questions:

• What are the likely nature of those risks and trade-offs?
• How are they expected to modulate potential productivity gains in cropping and in mixed cropping-and-grazing systems?
• Can we develop more productive and less risky farming systems by design?
• What new and currently available tools are required to quantify and communicate relevant and actionable information to a range of decision-makers?
• What barriers will we have to overcome to significantly scale out adoption?

Smallholders in the developing world are increasingly participating in producing commodities for global value chains, linking them to an array of market actors, each with specific priorities and requirements. These links can decisively influence the pattern of agricultural intensification and the opportunities for increased farm incomes, with important consequences for rural development. In this symposium we will explore a variety of ways in which smallholders are included in or excluded from profitable opportunities for agricultural intensification and commercialisation, and the implications of different models of smallholder participation for achieving sustainable-development goals. We develop a general framework for assessing smallholder participation and its consequences and apply this framework to case studies of different commodities in several Asian countries. This analysis has implications for agricultural research for development, technology adoption and sustainable intensification, which are key concerns of the TropAg2017 Conference.

Internationally, there is a patchwork of national gene-technology regulations. Some countries, like Australia, regulate based on the way a product was created (i.e., a process-based approach). Others, like Canada, regulate based on the characteristics of the final product (i.e., a product-based approach). Due to these differences, products developed through the latest innovations in plant and animal breeding are subject to different regulatory requirements in different markets. Consistent regulatory policies amongst governments for the products of the latest plant-and-animal-breeding methods, such as gene editing, would facilitate the uptake of advanced, innovative breeding applications by both private and public breeders in developed and developing countries.

Big data is already transforming traditional farming and grazing systems through tools such as variable-rate technology and DNA testing of livestock. These systems depend on technology that can quickly and accurately gather and interpret large volumes of data but to date the scope of their application has been limited.

In particular, the challenge facing tropical agriculture—where uptake of precision agricultural technologies is comparatively low—is how to apply new technologies in vast broadacre contexts where human support is limited and data transfer is slow. How can the big new ideas live up to their potential amid the harsh realities of farming in the tropics?

With this in mind, our panel will be challenged with the following questions:

• What are the farm practices that will be the next targets for data gathering?
• Why will this data unleash new productivity gains?
• What will the technology look like that will achieve these outcomes in our tropical environments?

Biorefineries, co-producing fuels, chemicals, feeds and other bioproducts offer great potential for improving the profitability of tropical agricultural industries. Biomass from agricultural wastes and specially grown energy crops can be converted into products with rapidly growing markets.

The Queensland Government has a vision to create a $1-billion industrial biotechnology and bioproducts sector in Queensland that is sustainable and export oriented, attracts significant international investment, and creates regional jobs that are high value and knowledge intensive. Through the Biofutures program, the government is working with Queensland’s world-leading agriculture and waste industries and its research sector to expand the state’s emerging industrial biotechnology and bioproducts sector.

This symposium will address the opportunities for biorefineries to contribute to future agricultural profitability in Queensland and will explore research activities currently underway in Queensland.

A range of new technologies is emerging which has brought agriculture to a significantly higher level of sophistication. This underlines the importance of engineering solutions in future agricultural-production systems.

Today’s farmers are faced with a much greater array of technologies than ever before. They make it possible to measure and analyse the production environment with unprecedented precision and accuracy to maximise yields. Coupled with increasing yields, however, is the need to reduce production costs and improve resource efficiency.

In future, engineering technologies will assist farmers by the following means:

• more precisely varying the amount of herbicide, pesticide and fertiliser applied to the field
• optimising irrigation and available water supplies
• seeking opportunities for on-farm energy independence.

This symposium will provide an overview of emerging trends in technology, highlight opportunities for tropical and subtropical agriculture by focusing on key areas, including precision agriculture incorporating intelligent systems, irrigation modernisation and energy independence.

Nanotechnology is emerging as a key research and industry focus to address the current challenges of sustainability, food security and climate change. Despite the numerous potential advantages of nanotechnology in the agriculture sector and the growing trends in publications and patents, agricultural applications have not yet made it to the market.

The key elements of this symposium will be as follows:

• Perspective on Ag-nano innovations in the agriculture sector across plant and animal science
• Design and regulation of nanomaterials
• Pathways to adoption of nano-related applications
• Are we ready to put Ag-nano innovations into practice?

This symposium will feature speakers covering the above aspects, who have been chosen from academia (innovations for future), government agencies (regulatory framework) and industry (pathway to adoption).