Our re-bid is continuing to grow with many Participants having signed ‘in-principle’ forms to support the bid. You cannot have a cooperative research centre without Participants and the support for further plant biosecurity research across industry, government, universities, and other R&D corporations is encouraging.

The research programs are evolving each day with valued input from our Program Taskforce and Participants Taskforce, as well as key end-users of the proposed research outcomes.

Our Program Taskforce had a very productive face-to-face meeting last week to discuss the research programs and further refine them. The next draft of the programs will be circulated tomorrow to the Participants Taskforce for end-user comment. Similar to our existing CRC, the new CRC’s Participants will mostly be made up of end-users, which enables greater engagement and the opportunity to actively meet their needs.

May will be a busy month with two key meetings for the Participants of the proposed CRC. After these meetings it will be time to knuckle down and finalise the re-bid documentation (much of which is already being written and collated in the background).

There is considerable effort being shown by all involved, and I would like to thank everyone for their contributions in what is shaping up to be a very solid bid.