His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales visited the Cooperative Research Centre for Salinity (CRC Salinity) in Perth today.

On display was cutting edge research showing that a common weed infesting much of our farming land appears to hold the key to helping our farmers cope with salinity.

CRC researcher Dr Tim Colmer and postgraduate student Natasha Teakle explained that the weed (sea barley grass) is one of the few plants actually capable of growing happily on quite salty ground.

What Dr Colmer and his research team are doing is cross breeding the barley grass with wheat, Australia’s most important farm crop, to develop a plant that still yields a valuable grain but which can grow on saline land.

 “What we have achieved is quite remarkable and probably a world-first. We still have a long way to go, but if we continue with our current rate of success we will remove a lot of the risk that farmers now face with land that is becoming too salty to farm safely.

 “On the one hand we are finding answers to questions that will help us to manage salinity, one of Australia’s greatest environmental problems. At the same time we are helping to sustain industries that contribute to rural wealth.

The potential impact of this research, supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation, goes beyond the millions of hectares of land threatened by salinity in Australia. It could also be applied to restore productivity to waterlogged and saline soils around the world.

Also on show was CRC research that shows that our own eucalyptus trees (mallees) can make a huge contribution to arresting salinity, while at the same time producing valuable agricultural products.

CRC researcher John Bartle demonstrated the distillation of eucalyptus oil from the leaves of mallee trees and explained that the same tree had spent its whole life soaking up greenhouse gases. 

At harvest the mallee tree delivers a host of valuable products, including activated charcoal (the most important component of the world’s air and water filters), raw material for particle board and finally biomass for energy generation.  All this on top of lessening the threat of salinity that is scarring our land.