In late 2020 CEAT established its Agri-Innovation Fellow Program. The Program helps ensure that CEAT is well connected to external agri-sector agencies and enables CEAT to identify the major industry challenges where researchers from the ANU-CSIRO Precinct could help develop innovative, transformative solutions. CEAT Fellows also act as ambassadors to build awareness of what the ANU/CSIRO Precinct has to offer the agri-sector, and contribute to events, workshops and research projects where relevant. 

In return, each Fellow becomes an official ANU Campus Visitor, and gains access to our world-class library resources and other resources at Acton Campus. We also provide Fellows with a place to work while they are visiting the CEAT Innovation Hub. But perhaps most importantly, we want to help Fellows advance thought-leadership projects where there is a mutual gain to both the Fellow and CEAT.  

To date, we had appointed three Agri-Innovation Fellows: Professor Janelle Allison to support  courses in Responsible Innovation; Dr Rohan Rainbow to explore where technology from other sectors (e.g. military, telecommunication) could be used to address complex challenges facing the agri-sector; and, Dr Nadeem Samnakay to develop a deeper understanding of what is meant by the term ‘drought resilience’ and to explore structural strengths and weaknesses of Australia’s agricultural innovation ecosystem.  

Looking forward, CEAT will expand the Fellow Program to foster links with a range of other sectors and communities, both within Australia and overseas. Noting this, CEAT is pleased to announce that Dr Alison Bentley has been appointed as our latest Agri-Innovation Fellow recruit. Alison is Director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Global Wheat Program and associated CGIAR Research Program on Wheat. From her base in Mexico, Alison manages a team of 40 international scientists tasked with developing new varieties of wheat with improved yield potential and climate resilience. Their work is crucial to improving food security across the planet, with CIMMYT germplasm currently distributed to 200 partners in wheat-producing countries worldwide. To give an idea of scale of their work, the new varieties developed by CIMMYT are now grown on 50% of the spring wheat areas in developing countries.

Alison has extensive experience in using genetics and genomics to improve crop production. She is passionate about improving the climate resilience of key crops such as wheat – the importance of which cannot overstated given climate change and the need to produce nutritious food for a growing global population.

Prior to joining CIMMYT, Alison worked at the century-old National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge UK, where she was a Senior Research Scientist for over nine years, and Director of Genetics & Breeding for just under five years. At NIAB, Alison’s work focused on translation of fundamental scientific breakthroughs into tangible impacts for the agri-food sector, with her work using genetics and genomics to improve crop production. Alison, as is often the case for such well-travelled scientists, is Australian (PhD, University of Sydney). 

In our discussions with Alison about how she would like to use the Fellowship to advance her work, CEAT explored ideas around how crop development and distribution of seed globally could be advanced through new ways of thinking and technology development. Noting the need to dramatically shorten the time taken to develop new climate-resilient crops (often 10-15 years), Alison is particularly interested in understanding what lessons could be applied from the rapid COVID-19 global vaccine development, in order to produce new wheat varieties within two to five years. Alison also sees opportunities to learn from block chain processes to achieve more equitable and effective seed delivery to developing countries – many of which face war or are politically unstable. The CEAT team looks forward to working with Alison to develop new initiatives in these areas.