News Archive

A powerful spotlight is shining on the Institute of Agriculture (IOA) at The University of Western Australia (UWA), with a long list of prestigious awards, scholarship grants and healthy student enrolments impressing the scientific community, governments and industry.

The recent prize windfall for three young UWA IOA students at the Young Professionals in Agriculture Forum, hosted by the Department of Agriculture and Food WA and Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, underlined why UWA is the university of choice for undergraduates seeking to excel in agricultural and related natural resource management studies.

Of all students who had completed their fourth year projects in agriculture-related subjects at WA universities, first (Taya Clarke), second (Robert Alderman) and third (Tess Metcalf) prizes were awarded to UWA agricultural science students. Ms Clarke’s UWA honours project allowed her to work with people inside the industry and gave her an insight into the realities of everyday life within agriculture.

“UWA has great facilities that encourage students to put into practice the theory they learn. I suggest future students keep an open mind and put themselves out there,” she said. Mr Alderman valued having those at the top of their field relay their knowledge.

“Being a city boy, it was good to start with the basics and learn about agriculture from the start, so going out to farms and actually experiencing them really helped me.

“I advise future UWA agricultural science students to read extensively outside their course requirements, including rural newspapers, as this helps generate a network of important industry contacts and places the classroom theory into the real world,” he said.

Tess Metcalf said her UWA honours project provided a great opportunity to interact with lecturers and academics on a different level:

“It’s great to talk with them about a topic you’re interested in and passion about. My experiences at UWA have opened doors and I now work at the Future Farm Industries CRC based at UWA.” UWA IOA Director, Professor Kadambot Siddique, said UWA agricultural achievements continue to grow.

“At the start  of semester one 2009, there were 62 new enrolments in agricultural and natural resource management sciences at UWA,” he said. “UWA Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (FNAS) graduates are in high demand and employment prospects in agriculture and related natural resource management remain strong, despite the world-wide economic downturn,” Professor Siddique said.

On top of steady growth, UWA IOA students are snapping up scholarships: Aprille Chadwick with the RSPCA Humane Animal Production Scholarship 2008 and Daniel Dempster, from the School of Earth and Environment, with a 2008 Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) Honours Scholarship, followed now by a GRDC postgraduate scholarship for research on biochar.

UWA agricultural science PhD student Annalise Mason is now studying in France, after receiving the Mike Carroll Travelling Fellowship award for her brassica research, while Professors Lorenzo Faraone and John Dell won the coveted Eureka prize for developing a colour near infra-red spectrometer with potential application in agriculture, attracting $1.5 million funding from the GRDC.

UWA School of Agricultural and Resource Economics academics scooped four prizes at the recent Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) conference. AARES honoured Dr Graeme Doole, Research Fellow in the UWA Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, with the Best Published Article award for 2008, published in the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, UWA Professor David Pannell, took out the Quality of Research Discovery award and Quality of Research Communication award, for a paper published in the international journal, Agricultural Economics.

Such success may be largely due to the impact of UWA agricultural research domestically and internationally. As FNAS Dean, Professor Tony O’Donnell, points out, UWA produced more indexed publications than any other Australian university and in three of five key strategic areas the university out-performed all of the international benchmark universities.

“One measure is the number of times these publications are cited. In agronomy, agricultural economics and policy and in agricultural soil sciences our cited works rank number one in Australia and against the international benchmark universities,” Professor O’Donnell said.

This is positive news for UWA IOA, as the 2009 Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics (ABARE) Outlook Conference indicates Australian farm exports will steer through global financial recession, rising by four percent to $32.1 billion next year. ABARE also predicts Australian farm export earnings to rise to $37.8 billion by 2013-14.Premier Colin Barnett highlighted agriculture’s increasing importance to WA’s economy in his recent address to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia.

Professor Siddique agreed, adding that agricultural production, consumption and trade would provide opportunities for investment and economic growth and the quality of UWA graduates, along with UWA’s interaction with industry, would positively assist the process. “UWA IOA is in the business of knowledge generation and transfer and equipping young, bright students to be the next generation of scientists, leaders and entrepreneurs in the important agriculture, food and environmental sectors,” Professor Siddique concluded. www.ioa.uwa.edu.au

Authorised by ‘Institute of Agriculture – UWA’ and issued on its behalf byBrendon Cant & Associates, Tel 08 9384 1122

Media references

Professor Kadambot Siddique, Tel 08 6488 7012, Mobile 0411 155 396