Australia
August 20, 2014

“Herbicides are as important to global food production as antibiotics are to human health” - Professor Stephen Powles.

Humanity has faced some major challenges in the past and has always met these challenges through innovation. The extremely infectious and deadly smallpox virus plagued people for centuries and yet by 1980 we had eradicated it on a global scale. The innovation? A newly perfected vaccine, and a huge, worldwide collaborative effort.

But while smallpox is gone, herbicide resistance lives on and as AHRI Director Stephen Powles believes, it is posing a huge threat to global food security. Our population is exploding and with grains the only feasible way to feed the world, we can’t afford a drop in grain production.

It will take new thinking to meet the challenge which is why Steve Powles and the AHRI team convened the Global Herbicide Resistance Challenge conference in Western Australia last year.

To read how Ian Heap opened the conference with a global perspective click here.

 

Website: http://www.ahri.uwa.edu.au/

Published: August 20, 2014