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InterGrain is one of Australia's leading crop breeding companies, with highly successful breeding programs in both wheat and barley. InterGrain Pty Ltd was established in October 2007 by the State Government of Western Australia and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), with the specific purpose of transferring the cereal breeding activities of the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia (DAFWA) from a government based operation into a commercial company structure to free it from the normal policy and political restrictions of government and enable it to operate in a competitive commercial environment. This decision was taken in light of two significant changes to the commercial environment for crop breeding in Australia: 1. The deregulation of the grains industry in Australia; and 2. The increasing capacity for breeding programs to be commercially viable from revenue achievable from Plant Breeder's Rights protected varieties through End-Point Royalties. The initial focus was on wheat, and under the transfer arrangements InterGrain was assigned all breeding material and associated intellectual property for both current and future commercial wheat varieties. InterGrain, DAFWA and GRDC have recently agreed also to transfer DAFWA's barley breeding program into InterGrain. The transfer of wheat and barley breeding operations into InterGrain, including professional and technical staff, was completed in September 2009. The final transfer of barley germplasm and IP will be completed when existing contractual obligations to Barley Breeding Australia cease with the expiration of that agreement in June 2011. Our CapabilityInterGrain has a strong team of experienced cereal breeders who have been responsible for the development of all InterGrain's current dominant varieties in both wheat and barley. InterGrain has a well developed structure for managing all aspects of successful breeding programs. It has excellent seed storage and processing facilities at Wongan Hills which include temperature controlled long term storage areas that provides excellent protection from weevil and other grain insect infestation without the use of fumigants and contact insecticides. The company also has a robotic system for seed packaging. Through its own in-house capability and the strategic contracting of commercial trial operators, it has a highly flexible capacity for undertaking trial programs throughout Australia that provides thorough testing of breeding lines in a diverse range of environments to allow efficient selection of improved varieties (see map). It uses state of the art spatial and cluster analysis to assist in the efficient selection of improved breeding lines. InterGrain has access to excellent molecular facilities through the State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre at Murdoch University and is actively using marker assisted selection (MAS) for selecting a range of important traits covering quality and resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses. InterGrain has collaborative links with a number of research organisations to provide access to the latest technologies in molecular markers, biotechnology, physiology, plant pathology and biometrics. These organisations include the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), CSIRO, Murdoch University, University of WA, and the Department of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA).
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