Andrew, what's the process you follow to identify the right biocontrol solution and how do you ensure that it will help and not harm the landscape?

What we're really trying to understand when we develop new biocontrol solutions is what potential risk that organism might play or have in a novel environment.

So, for example, if we're working on the invasive cactaceous weeds, and there are many in Australia, we'll go back to South America, generally where a lot of these weeds come from, and we'll look for a natural enemy, and that could be a pathogen or an insect.

And we try to identify at a very early stage something that might be what we call host-specific, so something that's only going to feed and develop on that particular weed target.

We then bring it to Australia, secure that organism in a quarantine facility where the insect can't escape.

And sometimes we have potential weed biocontrol agents, as we call them, in quarantine for up to six, seven years while we're doing all of this kind of testing that we do.

the testing is around trying to find out does the organism have an impact on the weed and is it host specific so is it only going to feed and developed on that particular weed target we don't want any insects or pathogens coming into australia that are going to affect any of our native species or any of our agriculturally significant species So that's our job is to accumulate as much evidence under those quarantine conditions as we can.

Reflecting on this particular project that you've just described, what's the role of cross-tenure collaboration when it comes to weed management?