Victorian minister in water talks
Jaala Pulford, Victoria’s Minister for Agriculture and Regional Development, has visited the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot.
Jaada Pulford in black learning about research
This is Minister Pulford’s first visit to Israel. Victoria is Australia’s largest exporter of agricultural produce, yielding an average of $13Bil in product a year from 12 million hectares. However, from July 2014 to May 2016, Victoria received below- average rainfall and despite record winter and spring rains since then the state remains under drought conditions.
An inherent water shortage has led Israel to excel in the fields of agricultural innovation that addresses climate change, plant adaptation to extreme climate, development of wastewater treatment technologies for agricultural purposes, and more. The Robert H. Smith Faculty is the leading research institute in Israel in these fields.
Minister Pulford’s delegation met with leading researchers at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, who presented explanations of their research in fields relevant to Victoria. Among the researchers were Dr. Zvi Peleg, who spoke about wheat production in light of climate changes in the Middle East region; and Prof. Menachem Moshelion, who spoke about whole-plant stress performance analysis as a new tool for functional phenotyping.
Minister Pulford expressed interest in the research and promised to explore possibilities of research cooperation in the future.
