A contingent of Mid North agricultural innovators and leaders have been named as finalists for an upcoming awards ceremony.
Six Mid North locals were announced on 1 December as finalists for the 2025 South Australian Grain Industry Awards, hosted by Grains producers SA (GPSA).
The Awards, which celebrate the industry’s exceptional leaders and recognise their efforts in 2025, will be held at Adelaide Oval on 3 February, between the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) Update.
Former plant breeder and current Pinery grower Andrew Barr was listed as a finalist for the Industry Impact for his extensive research efforts and developments as a plant breeder.
Mr Barr spent 30 years as a plant breeder, developing 24 varieties of oats, barley and wheat, including the well-known Echidna and Commander lines, which offered growers higher yielding and disease resistant options.
Most notably, Mr Barr played an integral role in developing cereal crops resistant to a prevalent plant disease of the time, cereal cyst nematode (CCN).
“In the Balaklava area, it was pretty common for yield losses of 25 to 50 per cent in wheat, 10 to 20 per cent in barley, and more than 50 per cent in oats at the time,” Mr Barr said.
“All of us cereal breeders put our heads together to breed resistant varieties … my contribution was Wallaroo and Marloo oats in 1988 which formed the basis of the fledgling export hay industry.
“Between all of those resistant varieties we bred, it took CCN from the biggest cause of yield loss in the 1980s to now, the current generation of cereal farmers probably wouldn’t even be able to recognise the symptoms because it’s basically wiped out as a disease of concern in South Australia.”
Mr Barr then shifted from oats to barley, releasing the first malting barley with resistance to cereal cyst nematode in 2001, a significant achievement at the time given the first feed variety was released in 1981.
In 2023 Mr Barr was awarded one of the grains industry’s most prestigious awards, the GRDC Seed of Gold award.
He has published more than 200 scientific, technical, conference and extension publications and has taken on various leadership roles including six years on the GRDC Southern Panel (2005-2011), three years as GRDC Director (2014-2017), Trustee and then Chairperson of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico (2008-2014), and is the current chair of the South Australian Grain Industry Trust.
Mr Barr said he was honoured and humbled to be recognised.
“If another farmer feels that I have contributed to something useful and nominated me, then that’s very pleasing and humbling,” he said.
“I think the reason you get into agricultural research in the first place is having been raised on a farm, you know that research and development is what keeps Australian farmers viable, because we don’t get subsidies.
“So innovation is the key to prosperity, and so if you can contribute to that in a small way, then that is absolutely all the reward you need.”
Mr Barr said his career journey was very rewarding and it had presented him with many opportunities.
“It is the best, most interesting career you can imagine, because it’s taken me to every grain growing part of the world,” he said.
“I’ve seen research programmes and farming across the world, which I never would have seen as a simple country boy, and just having met some of the most brilliant minds in cereal research around the world is a rare privilege as well.”
