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Dr. Lloyd May, Dr. Rob Jarvis and Dr. Robert Wright, the three international cotton specialists who were part of the recently completed CRDC, biotech and plant breeding review, comment on the Australian plant breeding program

Dr. Lloyd May, could you make some comments about the Australian Cotton Breeding effort?

I’d certainly be glad to. I first became aware of the CSIRO Cotton Breeding Program back in 1998 when I visited Greg Constable, Peter Reid and Warwick Stiller and I’ve been impressed with the quality of the program and  the germplasm that it’s produced. We first starting testing their materials after that visit in 1998 among other researchers and we immediately noticed that they went to the top of the trials, so that’s a testament to the quality of the program.

You’ve had a look on your trip here at the work they’ve done on introgression. Can you make some comments on how they’re going at getting various transgenes into the Australian cotton varieties?

I think they’ve done a marvellous balancing act between continuing conventional breeding to have new germplasm to put the genes into but they’ve also rapidly introgressed the new genes into the locally adapted varieties. So for example the Bollgard® II, the Flexes are coming and the growers will be pleased with the results.

As far as fibre quality goes, could you make some comments on how the Australian Cotton Breeding Program has been able to perform in the fibre quality area?

Absolutely, there are certain other Australian varieties that we grow under the FiberMax brand name in the United States that have combinations of fibre properties that we don’t have in our germplasm, or at least not in elite varieties anyway, lets put it that way. So, for example some of the ones that we have over there, they have such high fibre strength that they will actually expand the least significant difference in our trial by a couple of grams per tex when we put them in there.

What are the implications of that fibre quality to Australia in the World market in exporting cotton?

Since you don’t consume much of your fibre it has to be dependant on the global market and therefore it has to be acceptable to the processors, so absolutely, it’s a testament to what Norm Thompson began and it has continued under the current regime in terms of developing fibre packages that are demanded by open and spinning as an example. This technology has taken over much of the spinning capacity from ring spinning and if you don’t run well on open ends you don’t have a market.

Lloyd, one of the questions is you’ve reviewed the commercialisation of the varieties out of the CSIRO program. Have you got some comments there?

Absolutely, I think growers should feel blessed in Australia to have a partnership between CSIRO and CSD because that makes them not dependant on multi-national corporations to have access to seed and technologies. That’s one of our problems in the United States, that the perception is that we have more competition in the seed market but we really don’t because of the agglomeration of the seed companies under certain brand names and the inability to transfer our publicly developed varieties to the grower through something analogous to CSD. Now we do have CPCSD in California but they’re obviously concerned with the San JaquinValley and their sphere of influence basically ends at the state border in terms of eastern cotton.

Rob Jarvis, could you make some comments about what you’ve seen in Australia as far as biotech and plant breeding and how we are going on a world basis?

From what we’ve seen Adam, we think that Australia is right on track. The Plant Breeding Program is probably the best in the world in cotton and there’s certainly nothing to compare with it in scope and on the biotech side again you are amongst the world leaders in what’s happening there and a lot of those things have already been adopted commercially, not being grown in the field. So, I think you’re right on track.

As far as fibre quality goes, how are we going in that important area?

Once again, I come from a country that’s directly competitive with Australian quality and we struggle to keep up so I think again that’s a very positive part of your industry.

Dr.Robert Wright, Texas Tech University, can you give us an overview of what you have found as far as plant breeding in Australia and how do we compare to the rest of the world?

The Plant Breeding Program here with CSIRO in Australia is among the best in the world. We’ve worked quite a bit with them with our varieties that are now marketed as FiberMax varieties. They perform extremely well.

As far as their performance in Australia, they are really thinking outside the box in terms of what they do. Very aggressive in their approach and do things quite a bit differently than what we do in the States. The varieties are more of a complete package in terms of natural resistance, technology and then obviously fibre characteristics and fibre production, so they are fantastic in that sense.

How are we going as far as the Biotech side and the introgression of different traits into the Australian germplasm, how are we ranking there as far as what you’ve seen around the rest of the world?

Well, the Australian varieties have the same technology that we have in the States; the same herbicide technology and the same insecticide technology so in that sense they’re spot on in terms of what the Australian grower has compared to what we have in the US. CSIRO and the breeding program have developed those linkages with companies that they need to develop more technologies for the grower and obviously not be left out globally in terms of the technologies available, so I think they’ve done the right thing there.

Any comment on the way that the varieties are commercialised in Australia? Can you make any comment about that?

The system, in terms of taking public germplasm developed from CSIRO to the commercial grower is fantastic. We don’t have a system like that at all in the US and the link through CSD has worked fantastically for the Australian growers. The public researchers are obviously envious that we don’t have a similar system within the US, unfortunately we don’t, so a lot of our germplasm that’s been developed by public institutions is publicly in the public domain and rarely benefits the grower directly.