Andrew Borrell says speakers at the Fifth Australian Sorghum Conference at the end of January will be talking about current technologies that were only dreams when the last conference was held five years ago.

Molecular markers and gene discovery, crop physiology, modelling and functional genomics are all on the agenda for the January 31/February 1 conference on the Gold Coast.

But that’s at the “cutting edge” end of the conference program. For the many less scientific people in the sorghum industry there’ll be serious discussion about ways of improving sorghum yields and the improving market prospects in feed grain and ethanol production.

The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is the major sponsor of the conference, and that’s appropriate because the corporation directly invests more than $1.3 million a year in sorghum research.

And in a way the sorghum research program has served as a model for other grains industries.

The public sector – Queensland’s Departments of Primary Industries and Fisheries (QDPI&F) – carries out pre-breeding and development of adapted hybrids which private seed companies use to develop commercial lines for growers’ paddocks.

Dr Borrell, a sorghum physiologist with Queensland's Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries (QDPI&F), is the secretary of the Fifth Australian Sorghum Conference and he says the organising committee believes it has put together an innovative and challenging speaker program. 

The opening keynote address – “Breaking the yield barrier in sorghum” – will be delivered by former QDPI&F research scientist, now University of Queensland Professor, Graeme Hammer.

Then there will be an address on sorghum genomics – “Current status, prospects and implications” – by Professor John Mullet, director of the Institute for Plant Genomics & Biotechnology at Texas A&M University, partner with the QDPI&F sorghum team in ongoing research to discover the key “stay-green” genes.

The end-user view of the sorghum industry will come from the NSW Farmers Association’s Ray Johnson, on “Global trends in feed grain demand and supply and implications for Australia”, intensive livestock industry spokesman Kevin Roberts on “The future of sorghum in Australia – a feedlot customer perspective” and AgForce Grains president, Lyndon Pfeffer on “Benefits of ethanol to the sorghum industry”.

Further details of the conference and other information can be obtained from Dr  Borrell.