“This is the hub of cotton research in Australia,” said Dr Warwick Stiller while taking The Courier on a tour of construction works at The Australian Cotton Research Institute.
Dr Stiller leads CSIRO’s cotton breeding program based at the ACRI and was thrilled last year when the Federal Parliament approved an $18 million plan to upgrade facilities.
The funding has now been bumped up to $25 million, cementing the site as the premier location in Australia for cotton research and the ACRI, CSIRO and NSW DPI as a major employer in the Narrabri Shire.
The ACRI is operated by NSW Department of Primary Industries and facilities are shared with the CSIRO Agriculture and Food department.
“This is a significant investment by CSIRO which provides benefit to the cotton industry, but also importantly for the Narrabri and Wee Waa region,” said Dr
Stiller after the funding announcement.
Stage one of the upgrade is now complete – an impressive plant and equipment workshop that’s more than 1000 square metres in size and 7 metres high, suitable to house large machinery and equipment.
“It’s also been designed so that equipment like a JD7760 picker can be brought in and worked on,” added Dr Stiller.
You might not be able to see it, but another spectacular part of stage one is a new underground services corridor that modernises the delivery of services across the site including power, data, gas and water.
“And that’s all buried 1.5 metres underground,” added Dr Stiller.
Construction is now underway on stage two which includes a new laboratory building.
The $25 million investment will also see the development of a new breeding and cotton processing facility as the third and final stage of construction.
The upgrade will transform some of the ACRI’s old, 70s style infrastructure into modern and innovative facilities to reflect CSIRO’S role as a global research leader.
The new facilities will provide much greater capacity for research activities including cotton breeding, the monitoring of BT resistance and cotton nutrition research.
Research activities at the ACRI have played a key role in the development of cotton in both NSW and Queensland and more recently contributing to the development of the industry in the far south of NSW, northern Victoria as well as northern Australia.
Scientists at ACRI work hard to help the cotton industry achieve a sustainable future based on productivity and best practice natural resource, disease and pest management.
ACRI has both research and extension programs and while the emphasis is on cotton, the institute also engages in agronomic and breeding research encompassing summer and winter grain crops including wheat, canola, chickpeas, soybeans and mungbeans.
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