The Potential Impact of Biotechnology on the Wool Industry in 2029

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The first Future Woolscapes meeting defined key factors and constraints that directly influence the future of the wool industry. Biotechnology as a set of platform technologies is potentially well positioned to change the impact of many of these key factors by essentially decreasing cost structures in the wool industry and/or improving income through superior product range and quality.

There will be no generic single biotechnology that will achieve a change in all key factors. The approaches required will be highly specific for each of the key factors to be targeted. In addition, the first Future Woolscapes identified the environmental forces that may accelerate some of the primary external drivers for change over which the wool industry will have no direct control. It is highly likely that biotechnology will have an indirect impact on some of these environmental forces by changes in other (competing) livestock industries, environmental land use and global climatic conditions. It is not sensible to view the impact of biotechnology on the wool industry in isolation without its possible impact on other agricultural and environmental systems. Finally the application of biotechnology in the wool industry should be seen in the context of a sheep industry where increasing pressures may shift from a specialist production system (wool and meat) to a multipurpose sheep commodity system (wool, meat, milk), reference is therefore made to wool industry and sheep industry alike where appropriate.