Aust. Wool Board Gives £3m A Year For Research

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30347, 24 January 1964, Page 10

Aust. Wool Board Gives £3m A Year For Research

Each year the Australian Wool Board allocated about £3m for research work in the industry, the board’s recently-appointed director of production research (Dr. G. R. Moule) said in Christchurch last evening. Dr. Moule, who is at present studying the research programme of the New Zealand wool industry, arrived in Christchurch yesterday. In Australia, the research programme was aimed to a large degree at increasing productivity and the efficiency with which wool was produced. The greatest attention was being paid to pasture production. Throughout Australia, he said, there were 28m acres of improved pasture, each receiving at least lewt of superphosphate per year. At a cost of slightly less than £2O per ton to apply, the expenditure was appreciable, he said.

“Improving the pasture at this rate has led to an increase in carrying capacity of only 1.3 ewes to the acre, which is not good enough. Australia’s sheep population is growing by about 3 per cent annually, while New Zealand’s is increasing by about 4 per cent,” Dr. Moule said.

There would come a day when there would be no more land which could be successfully improved, so there was a constant need to

increase the carrying capacity.

He said the reproduction rates of the Australian flocks were very low, the national lambing percentage averaging about 70. There was a great deal of variation in this from state to state, Queensland barely averaging 50 per cent, while Tasmania had reached 100 per cent. Dr. Moule has been associated with the sheep industry for about 30 years. He joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in 1958, after having been director of sheep husbandry for the Queensland Department of Agriculture. Before he took up his appointment with the Australian Wool Board this year, he was officer in charge of the lan Clunies Ross Laboratory, near Parramatta, about 20 miles from Sydney. This laboratory is the largest of its kind in the world to be devoted entirely to sheep and wool production research work. It includes about 60 graduates on its staff of approximately 200. Dr. Moule said he was particularly interested in the survey the New Zealand Wool Board was carrying out, in which the biological aspects of the industry were being studied. Before returning to Australia next Month, Dr. Moule will attend the New Zealand Society of Animal Production Conference at Hamilton on February 14.