DROUGHT RESILIENCE SCHOLARSHIP winners announced!

Image credit: Chuttersnap | Unsplash

Vic Hub announced 5 scholarship awardees

2025 scholarships open 2 April, closing 2 May. Don’t miss out!

As part of our Capacity Building activities, the Vic Hub has awarded five $2,000 scholarships to emerging researchers conducting research that enhances the capacity of Victorian farmers and communities to build resilience to future droughts.

The awards recognise the diverse research interests of students from La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University, and reflect the complexity of issues impacting drought resilience.

The projects are described below and will be updated regularly throughout 2024-25, and look out for updates from the winners.

For more information regarding the scholarships and capacity building, contact Dr Tim Clune via email: t.clune@latrobe.edu.au.

Congratulations to these winners and all who applied.

Berenice Della Porta – La Trobe University

Project title: Incorporating soil biology into a farm-scale natural capital scheme: using microbial trait-based ecology to understand and assess soil health in agroecosystems.

This study seeks to deepen the current understanding of soil health in the context of the relative resilience of soil microbiological communities.  Using soil data collected from sites across the Wimmera, Lodden and southern Mallee, the project will seek to identify traits that enhance the capacity of microbiological communities to accommodate stresses such as drought.  The project will test the integration diverse agronomic practices (cereals, pastures, woodland) to understand how land management impacts the sustainability of functioning microbial communities.

Erandi Herath  University of Melbourne

Project title: Managing grape quality using plant growth-promoting microbes in biofertilizer

This viticulture project seeks to identify soil microbes that influence plant growth and enhance plant resilience to stress such as drought and salinity. A key aspiration of the project is to identify microbes that could contribute to a future biofertiliser product, tailored for Australian conditions, that enhances stress resilience and supports plant production.

Hameer Jhiknaria – University of Melbourne

Project title: Spatio-Temporal Assessment of Agricultural Drought Vulnerability with Farmers’ Perspective in North-West Victoria

Uses GIS to understand historic changes in drought vulnerability in north-western Victoria. Focusing on the period 2006-21, the project uses key statistics related to farm level impacts of drought such as wheat production, profitability, land use, farm water use coupled with broader social and physical statistics to describe the relative vulnerability of LGA’s in north-west Victoria to drought.

Muhammad Adnan – La Trobe University

Project title: Studying the Impact of Drought on the Biology of Weeds for Their Improved Management

This study seeks to understand the relative tolerance of C3 and C4 weed species to drought. In  doing so, it seeks to  understand the potential for proliferation under different drought scenarios and identify innovative interventions for their management.

Stephanie Rosestone – Institute of Water Futures, Australian National University

Project title: Embracing complex water futures together: critical futures thinking, creative imaginaries and coproduction

This workshop-based project is working with north-central Victorian (Goulburn-Broken CMA) land and water managers to better understand how these skills can enhance community resilience in the context of a changing and dynamic climate. The workshops will use an experiential learning approach to build a stronger understanding of opportunities for collective agency to deliver cross agency outcomes for whole of region resilience.