Digital Agriculture Industry Breakfast: Pest READI lays the foundation for a network of digital innovation in AW-IPM
The CSIRO Pest READI team has successfully established the foundation for a network of digital innovators focused on enhancing supporting pest management decision-making through technology. Hosted at Brisbane’s Ecoscience Precinct on the 19th February, the Digital Agriculture Industry Breakfast served as the inaugural event for this community-building effort by Pest READI, supported Hort Innovation funding.
The event was strategically held alongside the largest Ag-Innovation event in the national calendar, EvokeAG, pulling an audience of farming innovators from both Australia and abroad. The Digital Agriculture breakfast provided a great opportunity to leverage the industry wide attendance at Brisbane’s EvokeAG 2025 event towards building a community around the development of grower support tools to support sustained resilience within our farming community, for years to come.
The breakfast was well attended by industry and featured presentations and a panel session providing an overview of the project’s unique co-design process and approach to developing digital architecture that supports grower preparedness for biosecurity risk and adoption of Area Wide Integrated Pest Management (AW-IPM) across mixed farming commodities.
Opening the session was CSIRO’s Chief Scientist Dr Andy Sheppard, who heads the CSIRO/DAFF Catalysing Australia’s Biosecurity (CAB) Initiative, which contributed towards funding the project. CAB is involved in a range of initiatives aimed towards enhancing Australia’s Biosecurity Capabilities, with a focus on platform technology and translatable science.
The subsequent panel discussion featured Project Leader Dr Hazel Parry, Innovation Facilitator Dr Tracey Steinrucken, and Digital Agriculture Scientist Dr Paul Melloy. A number of audience members involved themselves in the discussion during the panel session, which allowed for further insights and laying the foundations for further involvement, showing strong interest in the material being presented.
We’re looking forward to participating in ongoing discussions and working groups with attendees, and we’d like to thank Byron Kearns and CSIRO’s CAB Initiative for their support in making this event happen.