APPN attends ICRI 2024 to showcase food and agricultural infrastructure

APPN was excited to attend the International Conference on Research Infrastructures, held from 3-5 December 2024 in Brisbane, Australia. 

Around 420 people from 50 nations travelled to Brisbane for this rewarding, productive and thought-provoking conference. APPN were excited to send our team and participate in a shared NCRIS booth showing national research infrastructure plus moderate and participate in panel session 9: How RI is supporting sustainable agriculture, nutrition and development.  

APPN CEO Richard Dickmann moderated the Panel, which included:

• Stijn Dhondt, Head of the VIB Agro-incubator
• Professor Paul Gauthier, Professor of Protected Cropping at the Centre for Horticulture Sciences at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
• Professor Wei Guo, an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the University of Tokyo, Japan
• Prof. Danielle Way, APPN Node Director with the Australian National University
• Professor Sushil Kumar is the Director of Research at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. 

The Panel session aimed to guide policy on prioritising efforts and funding for research infrastructures over the next decade to ensure global nutrition with minimal environmental impact. Key sub-themes include addressing climate change’s effects on food production, such as water scarcity and shifting agricultural zones. 

Discussions explored how research infrastructures and their collaborations can develop new crops and management systems suited to changing climates, implement systems for optimal sowing and food distribution, and promote sustainable agriculture with reduced waste and a managed carbon budget. Participants also focused on North-South agricultural collaboration, and how research infrastructures can track and accelerate developments in Africa, the Indo-Pacific, Oceania, and beyond. 

We are now excited to see that agriculture and food security research infrastructure was prominent in the final ICRI 2024 Brisbane Statement (view here: https://lnkd.in/grET8zUj). 

Presented by Claire Sainsbury, Assistance Secretary in charge of Australia’s National Collaboratve Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), the statement emphasised that “Research Infrastructures underpin global collaborative research efforts to ensure world-wide food security by working to overcome environmental challenges such as constrained soil and water resources, and threats from pathogens, pests and invasive species.”

“Ongoing support for research infrastructure capability is needed for these research efforts to continue to chart a global path toward future food sustainability.”

APPN congratulates the organising team for delivering a practical, outcome oriented, and wide-ranging statements that capped of a truly amazing conference. 

For those who were not there, we also provided a fact sheet highlighting APPN’s service offering in the conference satchel as we wanted to ensure everyone was aware of the importance of the agricultural and food production section.  You can view the fact sheet here.

19 December 2024