The Federal Government has announced the successful applicants for the first round of the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) Grand Challenge Fund.

 

The fund will see top scientists from Australia and India research funding for collaborative cutting edge research in the priority area of food and water security.

 

“The Grand Challenge Fund aims to deliver practical and innovative solutions to some of the major challenges both countries share,” Federal Minister for Science and Research Senator Chris Evans said.

 

“This collaboration will form an integral part of the knowledge partnership our governments have committed to build.”
 
The three successful projects announced today, selected by an independent joint expert panel, will explore methods to boost crop productivity and post harvest grain protection through innovative science.
 
Australia will provide $8.9 million to fund the Australian arm of the research and the Government of India will support the participation by Indian teams in these joint projects.
 
The three successful projects are:

 

  • Ensuring food security: harnessing science to protect our grain harvest from insect threats’: a collaboration between the University of Queensland and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU);
  •  ‘Crop plants which remove their own major biotic constraints’: a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in India; and
  • ‘Genomic Approaches for Stress Tolerant Chickpea’: a collaboration between the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India.
     

The Grand Challenge Fund is a component of the $64 million Australia-India Strategic Research Fund, which has supported more than 90 projects, involving more than 100 leading Australian and Indian universities and research institutes since it began in 2006.
 
The Grand Challenge Fund is designed to support projects of a significant scale and ambition, up to $3 million per project in Australian contribution, and an applied focus in areas of priority to Australia and India.