National annual investment area forums for collaboration and technical review

By 2020, improved collaboration and mentoring between research agencies and leaders in each investment area across the three regions.

The forums will ensure more robust projects through a process of:

• peer-review

• knowledge sharing

• mentoring

• developing collaborations between agencies, reducing duplication

This GRDC investment is to:

Output 1. One annual research forum held for each of the four investment areas – agronomy, farming systems, nutrition and soils.

Details

• Each project leader will be required to present their current findings, plans for the next year and progress against outputs. Time will be set aside for peer review of the project method and results.

• Forums will be conducted as individual meetings and shared between the three regions.

• Locations of each forum will revolve on an annual basis to facilitate the attendance of local junior staff with reduced costs.

• Attendee numbers will be managed to encourage greater interaction with sufficient time for detailed presentation and discussion

  • if needed forums may be broken into smaller sub-groups

Output 2. A project summary book (in E-book format).

Details

The E-books will contain:

• for each project a 1 to 2 page summary/abstract of the work to date (similar to the ‘Plain English Summary’)

• a list of attendees and their contact details to facilitate future communication. This list should contain:

  • name and research organisation

  • complete contact details

  • current GRDC funded project(s)

The e-book will be available to all attendees, GRDC staff and GRDC science writers.

Output 3. Written report summarising the forum, including:

• new research gaps/ideas identified during the forum (classified against the GRDC investment hierarchy)

• contact details of all attendees as per Output 2

Details

The report to be submitted by the event manager to the GRDC within six weeks of the forum.