Land & Water Australia is managing the R&D component of the Australian Government's Defeating the Weed Menace Programme, which runs until June 2008.

Defeating the Weed Menace is a national programme established by the Australian Government in 2004.

Managed jointly by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of the Environment and Water Resources, the programme aims to identify Australia's most threatening weeds and to implement measures for their control.

For more information on the R&D component, download the Defeating the Weed Menace R&D brochure. 

Goals

The goals of the Defeating the Weed Menace R&D component are:

• To generate new knowledge to prevent the development of new weed problems
• To reduce the impacts of existing weeds of national priority
• To build the capacity for their management into the future.

The research and development component was strongly guided by the
 Draft Defeating the Weed Menace R&D Strategy.pdf (pdf - 870KB) which is also available as a summary paper.

Research Themes

Round one research themes currently commissioned

1. Developing 'best practice' early detection, survey and eradication of potential weed species
2. Assessing risk of different pathways of weed ingress
3. Identifying biocontrol agents for priority weed species
4. Land use change impacts on weed incursion 

Round two research themes to be contracted

The funding call for the second round of research projects has now concluded with research projects selected under the following themes:

1. Developing new integrated weed management strategies that incorporate an understanding of landscape scale ecological processes
2. Developing efficient methods for surveying and eradicating agreed emergent weeds,
3. Quantifying the impacts of weeds on sustainability and the environment (including the
   ecological costs of weeds) and the relative benefits and costs of different control
   measures.

View the project summary fact sheet  containing information on round one and round two projects.

Future research activities

Consideration is also being given to commissioning further project activities specifically on the two following themes:

1. Providing knowledge to support a national information system for weeds; and
2. Supporting the development of biological control for agreed national priority weeds.

Further Information

Contact the R&D Coordinator Dr Judy Lambert by email at judy.lambert@lwa.gov.au or by phone on (02)9948 7862. 

For more information related to the control and management of weeds, including the Australian Weeds Strategy, Weeds of National Significance and National Weeds Management Facilitators, see the Weeds Australia website at www.weeds.org.au.