WOOL RESEARCH SCHEME

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24869, 8 May 1946, Page 9

WOOL RESEARCH SCHEME

AUSTRALIA TO SPEND HUGE SUMS SEARCH FOR A BETTER ARTICLE SYDNEY, April 29. Australia intends to spend from £250,000 to £300,000 a year more on wool research, which means an annual expenditure of anything from £370,000 ; to £420,000. This is the biggest programme of scientific research on an individual product in Australian history, writes Clive Turnbull, in the , “Herald,” Melbourne. The idea is to find ways of growing more and better wool, more and easier ways of using wool, ways of making wool more acceptable to users. Tins vast project to be carried out j for the Commonwealth Government by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research is of first importance to Australia. It involves both a short-term programme, dealing with immediate problems, and a long-term programme, designed to increase the production of wool and to find more use for it.

To take one aspect alone: if Australia, by the application of scientific' method, were able to increase, over! the next 20 years, the yield of wool from each sheep' by 31b it would mean, at the immediate pre-war rate, an addition -of at least £15,000,000 to the national income. But much more than k this is involved. The whole future of the wool industry, and, therefore, of the Australian economy, depends upon an increasing efficiency in the production of wool, and an increasing efficiency and range in the maufacture of wool. The wool industry has not only to reach the maximum efficiency, but it has to meet and counter the threat of synthetics. Jn the ast pre-war year, the sheep exports produced onethird of Australia’s revenue from abroad. The research project is not Australia's Five-Year Plan, but Australia’s Twenty-Year Plan. It is one of thei comparatively few examples of plan-| ning on the national scale that we cah produce, -and it is one of vital, importance. Normally, 77 per cent, of the wealth produced by the sheep comes from wool—not only from scoured wool, which goes to the manufacture of and woollens, byt from such by-products from the greasy wool as wool wax, from which, in turn, comes lanoline, used as a base for cosmetics, and for other purposes. Mattel's of Urgency The Wool Research Plan stems from an annouheement in 1944 that the Commonwealth Government had become convinced that wool research and publicity were matters of great urgency if wool was to withstand the threat of synthetics. Tt was, therefore, decided to ssk the woolgrov. ers to make a contribution of 2s a bale, to be subsidised by the Government to an equal amount. As a result of two inconspicuous bills passed by the Federal Parliament late last year, to give effect to this intention, somewherel about £250,000 a year (increasing with the value of the clip) will become available for research,\jn additloiv to about £120,000 which is already expended upon the sheep and wool industry by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (apart from corresponding sums to be expended on marketing and publicity). The research programme falls into two main divisions, production and manufacture, and these, in turn, are divided into other categories. In some branches, such as animal health and nutrition, the council has a long record of extremely successful work. But in others new ground will have to be broken, and the difficulties involved getting or training technicians and in building and equipping laboratories are such that the programme in some aspects will not get under way for some time. In the beginnings the Australian sheep produced a fleece averaging about 31b. By the diligent efforts of ; flock, masters the average wool clips Tbse Steadily to about 51b in 1880,. and I then to 91b in 1927. For the last 18 years there has been no significant alteration in the yield. The achievement is greater than at first appears, however, for the increase in the number of sheep has meant the bringing into use of much poorer country; the maintenance of the 91b average is thus a feat in itself. If, OVer a necessarily long term, the average yield could be raised to the 151 b achieved in some cases, or even to 121b t the huge gain to Australia is obvious. Animal Health In animal health much has already been done—the conquest of black disease and coast disease provides examples. But much remains—the problem of an increasing infertility in sheep, in the subterranean clover belt of western Australia and other States, for instance, which involves some extremely complex biological factors. Much, too, is hoped for from the application of the principles of the science of genetics of breeding- breeding guided by progeny test (such as have always applied to racehorses), rather than by the standards, to some degree aesthetic standards, of show judges. Such experiments as these I necessarily involve thousands of sheep, j and must be spread over a long j period Much has-been done by the council in nutrition, and its work on the importance of minor element deficiences (cobalt, copper, molybdenum, etc.), in the soil is widely known. Deficiencies of what have been established as essential minerals are not uncommon in, this old and leached-out continent; in. such cases their artificial supply is. necessary. This work will be extended! and, likewise, the current plant re-’ search, which includes the best use of native pastures, on which our wool' sheep are almost wholly dependent, i On the manufacturing side, the work falls into four sections —fibre protein research, engineering, the solution of day-to-day problem of textile manufacture, and the extended use of byproducts. Protein research gets down to the essential constitution of wool. The American facetious description of a horse as a “hay burner” has a good scientific basis. A sheep is a grass burner, and, in the process, converts the protein of grass into the protein of wool. Under such instruments as the new electron-microscope of the CSIR you can see the protein molecules of wool. If you can effect certain changes in these molecules you effect Vital changes in the nature of the wool. Here is a fruitful field of research which may be of the utmost practical value, for each modification is a potential process for industrial application. The problems of wool engineering require elaborate and detailed study. In essentials, the processes of to-day closely resemble those of the mediaeval weavers. Compared with the processes used in the production of synthetic fibres they are extraordinarily numerous and involved, and consequently expensive. Can some of these be combined or short-circuited by modern engineering methods? Research workers think so, and this will be another field of the council’s activity. Another section will mean-; while deal with the immediate problems of the trade. But it is not only wool that we have to sell. We have also to find new uses for wool by-products. Of these the most important is wool wax, thei source of lanoline, familiar as a base i of cosmetics and ointments. In the extension of the use of these by-pro-| ducts lie great possibilities and a spe- • cial section will deal with them. All this is a tremendous job, just as important to each individual Australian as, say, electrification or the ’ development of heavy industry was to the citizen of Soviet Russia. It is an overall plan to bring the whole of the resources of contemporary science, from molecular physics to production engineering, to bear upon the maintenance and consistent expansion of Australia’s pricipal source of wealth.