From pioneering heat-tolerant, nutrient-rich crops to mapping Earth’s deep history and unlocking critical minerals, we’re working with industry to deliver innovations with global impact.
Professor Richard Trethowan’s world-leading research in wheat genetic improvement has led to increased productivity and yield potential by circumnavigating self-fertilisation, which has changed how we breed and market wheat for Australia and the world.
Richard is Professor of Plant Breeding and Director of the Plant Breeding Institute, that includes the state-of-the-art Narrabri facility, on the northwestern plains of NSW. His research interests include new plant breeding technologies, improving heat tolerance in cereals and legumes, and developing nutrient-rich grain crops.
Richard’s work is having long-term impacts for farmers. Climate change is affecting the distribution and productivity of Australian cereals and pulses, influencing the processing quality and dietary value of harvested grains.
Breeding heat-tolerant crops can help maintain yields and nutritional quality, reducing the effects of a changing climate on crop distribution and human nutrition.
Our translational work is driven by industry partnerships. For example, new prototype materials carrying new diversity for high temperature tolerance is annually tested nationally by InterGrain as part of their commercial program.
As a plant breeder, Richard’s work requires access to vital genetic diversity to continue to improve the adaptation of crops to our increasingly variable environments.
“We have long standing and formal collaborative research linkages with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Mexico, and the Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in North Africa.
"We also have important linkages with India and Pakistan that provided new heat tolerant diversity from high temperature environments in south Asia that is now working its way into Australian wheat cultivars,” says Richard.
Richard and his team also work with international companies such as KWS in Germany and Australian commercial wheat breeding companies including Australia Grain Technologies, InterGrain, Long Reach Plant Breeders and RAGT, and have partnerships with local farmer cooperatives such as Rebel Seeds and AustGrains.
"Our translational work is driven by industry partnerships. For example, new prototype materials carrying new diversity for high temperature tolerance is annually tested nationally by InterGrain as part of their commercial program."
The key metric when it comes to plant breeding is developing cultivars for agricultural production. Richard has so far developed 45 wheat cultivars which have been directly released to farmers from across 13 countries including Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Kenya and Pakistan.
Added to this, Richard’s work has helped produce parental lines that have been used by local wheat breeders to develop important new varieties grown on large areas.
“As leaders of an ACIAR Indo-Australian collaboration we were also involved in the release of the first wheat cultivar in India developed using molecular technologies,” says Richard.
A new high yielding hybrid wheat variety that will be a game changer for food security.
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LinkIn 2022, Richard was awarded the Farrer Medal, an accolade, named in honour of plant breeder William James Farrer, in recognition of his distinguished service in agricultural science in Australia.
However, Richard is not resting on his laurels. He and his team have created a game-changing new technology to benefit farmers. This includes the development of a unique genetic system for overcoming the barriers of self-fertilisation in wheat so that wheat hybrids can be made.
“We will also build on our long experience with heat tolerance, rust resistance and other important traits to deploy stress tolerant hybrids nationally and globally using the diversity we’ve been able to introduce into adapted wheat over time,” says Richard.
He and his team have taken the technology to Pakistan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh where the technology is expected to produce significant improvements in yield and farmer livelihoods.
“I have been a wheat breeder in Mexico, Victoria, Narrabri and now a wheat pre-breeder at The University of Sydney, and our research improves not only Australian wheat, but contributes significantly to enhancing global food security,” says Richard.
Professor Richard Trethowan (left) and Associate Professor Peng Zhang (right) inspecting wheat with field robot.
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LinkWe will also build on our long experience with heat tolerance, rust resistance and other important traits to deploy stress tolerant hybrids nationally and globally.
Partnering with us gives you access to leading experts, cutting edge facilities and flexible, cost effective research solutions. We help you maximise your R&D budget, tap into government funding and solve complex challenges without the overheads.
Professor Dietmar Müller leads the EarthByte Group, which builds a deep-time virtual Earth via geodata synthesis across space and time. The group aims to better understand the dynamic Earth, its paleogeography, and past climates. Its primary applied research focus is critical mineral exploration in the context of the energy transition.
"Understanding the Earth's geological record is key to understanding our future. I build computer models that describe how the Earth's tectonic plates have moved and changed shape over time. Our aim is to understand the planet's interior evolution, surface environments, and mineral endowment through deep time on land and in the oceans," says Dietmar.
EarthByte was established within the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney in 2002 to bring together disparate geoscience information from around the world. The EarthByte Group fosters open innovation by developing collaborative software, utilising high-performance computing, analysing large-scale data, and providing open-access digital datasets to the public.
Understanding the Earth's geological record is key to understanding our future. I build computer models that describe how the Earth's tectonic plates have moved and changed shape over time.
The EartyByte group has led a range of industry transformation projects, including the ARC Basin Genesis Hub (BGH), a research centre supported by the Australian Research Council and industry partners, as well as numerous direct industry and ARC Linkage grants.
The BGH created a new ‘exploration geodynamics’ toolbox for industry, enhancing the capacity for innovation in software applications of exploration companies. Subsequent projects have advanced AI-powered deep-time exploration technologies to understand the geodynamic environments in which key critical mineral deposits have been created.
“An example of this is the STELLAR project with BHP in which we developed a spatio-temporal data mining method to map where and when copper deposits along the Earth's subduction zones have been created and preserved through time," says Dietmar.
The Group’s Model Atlas of the Earth showcases the power of the BGH exploration toolbox by offering a rich collection of numerical basin simulations. This growing set of simulations will help map vital resources like water, hydrogen, and critical minerals more effectively.
With its model visualisations and data, industry professionals can quickly analyse and interpret basin model data, improving exploration insights in challenging, data-scarce areas.
Dietmar recognised early on that open software held the key to transforming vast amounts of data into useful information by connecting geodata to a dynamic Earth model.
“GPlates, supported by the AuScope National Research Infrastructure, is a cross-platform plate tectonic geographic information system, which is now the de facto standard for reconstructing geodata in deep time. AuScope supplies the Australian and global geoscience community with research tools, data, analytics, and support. Without it, developing software with numerous industry translation pathways over two decades would have been impossible.
“GPlates is used by researchers at universities, industry, and government institutions in nearly all countries, leading to ~2000 community publications in journals and books. It has allowed us to become the global leader in this field,” says Dietmar.
In 2023, Dietmar was a finalist in the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for research software. “Most of my research would have been impossible without GPlates software,” says Dietmar.
Professor Dietmar Müller and Associate Professor Maria Seton (both standing) analysing data with the GPlates team.
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LinkThe EartyByte teams used GPlates to compile data over many years to produce a model of how the Earth’s tectonic plates have moved over the last 1.8 billion years. In less than two minutes, the model shows how continents and plate boundaries have changed and moved over an unimaginably vast geological time period.
Antarctica, now a frozen, icy land, was once a warm, tropical spot near the equator. The model was featured in Forbes Magazine and numerous media outlets worldwide.
The model offers insights into past climate shifts, changes in ocean currents, and nutrient movement from Earth’s depths, which fuelled biological evolution. It unravels how Earth became a haven for complex life, emphasising the critical role of plate tectonics.
“This breakthrough research brings us closer to understanding how our planet evolved into a life-supporting world.”
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GPlates data showing how the Earth’s tectonic plates have moved over the last 1.8 billion years.
