Australian Cotton Disease Collaboration
Introducing the Australian Cotton Disease Collaboration (ACDC).
Disease is a major priority issue for the Australian cotton industry. It contributes to significant yield losses and undermines long-term confidence in growing cotton.
In extreme cases, some growers have opted out of cotton in response to severe and escalating disease pressure.
CRDC has invested in cotton disease research over several decades. Nevertheless, disease is still one of the leading limitations in the cotton production system. As a result, in the new CRDC Strategic RD&E Plan 2023-28: Clever Cotton, CRDC is proposing a new collaborative approach to disease research to mitigate the economic impacts of disease.
CRDC’s goal is to reduce the economic impact of current and emerging diseases of cotton to less than five per cent of the cost of production by 2028 through practice change and RD&E.
To achieve this, CRDC is committing $10 million to disease RD&E over the five years of Clever Cotton. This will be achieved via the Australian Cotton Disease Collaboration (ACDC), in partnership with the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) and the Qld Department of Primary Industries (Qld DPI, formerly Qld DAF).
For more, visit the ACDC Virtual National Centre.
