Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub

Long-Term Trials (LTT) for Drought Resilient Farming Practices

Vic Drought Hub - Farmland 1
  • University of Melbourne
  • Drought Resilience Research

 

Victorian farmers and regional communities to benefit from major, long-term investments into drought preparedness.

 
The project, which is part of $38m in Federal Government innovation grants announced in 2023, will:

  • provide rigorous scientific evidence for the effectiveness or otherwise of farming-systems adaptations hypothesised to improve drought resilience ofbroadacre grains, grazing and mixed-farming systems
  • investigate pasture diversity to build resilience, and support 365 days of feed production in southern temperate grazing enterprises

 

The project is investigating practices to improve drought resilience in mixed-farming, grazing and broadacre-grain systems. Core experiments in the six-year project have been established at The University of Melbourne’s Dookie Campus, and supported by field trials in the Mallee and south-west regions of Victoria, as well as in Tasmania. This project is also closely co-ordinated with one led by the Southern NSW Drought & Innovation Hub, based at Charles Sturt University, covering mixed farming systems in southern NSW.

Prof Michael Tausz, one of the project leads, said, “The University of Melbourne, which hosts Vic Hub headquarters, is leading the project, with others in the consortium including the Vic Hub’s South-West Node, Southern Farming Systems; the North-West Broadacre Cropping Node, Birchip Cropping Group; the North-East Node, Riverine Plains; and Federation University; as well as partners from the Tas Farm Innovation Hub.”

 

LTT project updates

 

LTT grant announcement