Grower Peter Glennie’s 40-year CSIRO partnership honoured

Strong relationships formed between growers and researchers have
been an essential part of the cotton industry’s success in Australia and will continue to play an important role in the future.

The CSIRO has been running cotton breeding trials with Moree farmer Peter Glennie at his ‘Norwood’ property in the Gwydir Valley
for 40 years.

CSIRO’s Dr Warwick Stiller and Deon Cameron recently presented Mr Glennie with a framed plaque to recognise his contribution, assistance and achievements over this period.

“It’s been marvellous, I’ve really enjoyed it,” said Mr Glennie about his collaboration with CSIRO.

Their working relationship began in 1980 when Mr Glennie was one of the very early cotton growers in the region and the CSIRO was on the hunt for growers who were not only keen on developing the cotton industry but also showed interest in the research arm.

Mr Glennie continues to have an interest in both – having worked with CSIRO as well as other lead cotton industry researchers investigating nutrition, pest management and biodiversity.

“I can remember a group of 12 people came out here on a Sunday to first start the trial,” said Mr Glennie when recalling how keen CSIRO were to establish work at his farm.

“I’ve really enjoyed being involved and think it’s important that researchers have a connection to what’s going on in the field.”

Mr Glennie firmly believes that research is important and said growers and researchers needed to work together to ensure trials and developments are relevant and communicated well to the broader industry.

Through improvements in varieties and technologies, Mr Glennie has seen cotton yields more than triple. Witnessing “the quality increase and the yield increase” has been one of the highlights for Mr Glennie.

During the 40 year period, Mr Glennie has worked with CSIRO breeders to improve cotton varieties for the benefit of all Australian cotton growers (all cotton grown in Australia are CSIRO-developed varieties), as well as international adopters.

Mr Glennie said he’d appreciated the opportunity to work with a variety of people over the years including Dr Norm Thompson, Craig Patrick, Dr Greg Constable, Peter Reid, Dr Warwick Stiller and Dr Shiming Liu.

CSIRO cotton breeding leader Dr Warwick Stiller said research and its adoption by industry is reliant on people like Mr Glennie who make their properties available for field trials.

“To successfully validate new cotton varieties before wider commercial release, we need to be able to test them under a range of different growing conditions, such as different climate and soil, together with different crop management,” Dr Stiller said.

“We’re tremendously grateful to those growers around the country who allow CSIRO to trial new varieties on their properties for the wider benefit of the entire industry.

“Every cotton variety released over the last 40 years, and there have been 106, have been evaluated and selected on Peter’s farm.”

“Peter really is a shining beacon for the researcher-farmer relationship – I don’t know of any other farmers who have been involved in field trials for as long as him.

“We’re incredibly thankful to him.”