Club Meeting, 18 May ’26; Speaker & Topic: Emeritus Professor Robert Henry – Utilisation of Native Plants for Food Production

Introduction

Emeritus Professor Robert Henry, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland

Potential New Bush Foods

Robert’s passion stems from the slow awakening to the enormous, untapped food and cropping potential of countless indigenous plant species whose genetics could be critical to the planet’s food security. Internationally, northern Australia is already being talked about as the frontier for new plant genetics in indigenous grain-bearing grasses, pulses and fruits. This is of potentially huge value to plant breeders needing to bolster domesticated crops with increased climate resilience.

His research aims to define the basis of human selection for quality in food and non-food crops. These traits are critical to satisfying food and energy security because new plant varieties that may have higher yields may not be accepted for production by farmers if they fail to meet consumer expectations of quality and as a result are not marketable.

Current research focuses on the major global food crops, rice and wheat and the leading current and potential energy crops, sugarcane and eucalypts and adapting agriculture to climate change.