CRC60111: Russian Wheat Aphid – Supervisors Meeting and Strengthening Collaborations

Dr Susan Fuller travelled to China to meet with PhD candidate, Ms Bo Zhang and her supervisors Owain Edwards (CSIRO) and Dr Le Kang (Chinese Academy of Science). Susan is the principal supervisor for Bo’s PhD project CRC60111: Russian Wheat Aphid. The purpose of Susan’s visit was to ensure that field sampling and initial lab work was well planned and that Bo’s project continued to meet proposed timelines. Travelling to China was also an opportunity for Susan to guide Bo in her laboratory studies, particularly in the area of microsatellite DNA marker development and screening. Furthermore, this trip helped Susan to deepen collaborative relationship between Australian and Chinese researchers.

The CRCNPB project 60111: Russian Wheat Aphids represents an extremely important step in Susan’s research career, as the project is helping her to build professional links both domestically (with CSIRO) and internationally (with the Chinese Academy of Sciences). Linkages of this type are extremely beneficial for both short and long term career progression.

Susan found that travelling to China was extremely beneficial, as meeting face-to-face with international partners, in their home laboratories was much more valuable in developing personal links than a year’s worth of exchanged emails.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing will act as a base to study populations of the Russian wheat aphid in its native range, western China. This collaboration is ideal in terms of facilitating collection of samples, which when compared with samples from invasive populations, will provide valuable management information for what is considered to be one of the greatest biosecurity threats to the grains industry in Australia. The expected outcome of the project is the development of an improved, pre-emptive biosecurity plan for the Russian Wheat Aphid.

This travel proposal has lead to the further strengthening of collaborative links between Australian and Chinese researchers. It has also facilitated knowledge transfer and research approaches in invasion biology/biosecurity amongst the researchers and organisations involved. This travel grant has allowed Susan to meet with all partners involved in the CRC60111: Russian Wheat Aphid project and to coordinate the management of the research program for the next 12 months.

During this visit, Susan also had the opportunity to meet with Dr Qiao, a world-renowned aphid taxonomist, who has agreed to provide Bo with access to the aphid collection in the Beijing Museum of Zoology. This represents a very valuable connection and future collaboration.