Over four years from 2019 to 2023, the Rural Research and Development for Profit Round 2 project, ‘Area Wide Management (AWM) for cropping systems weeds: investigating the weed management, social and economic opportunity’ explored the potential for an AWM approach to weed management. The Grains Research and Development Corporation was the project proponent, and contracted CSIRO to implement the project. The project involved a multidisciplinary team of researchers and regional facilitators, as sub-contracted by CSIRO. The project involved three regional trials in Sunraysia, Riverina and Darling Downs with project-wide research in herbicide resistance, genetics, social science and economics.

Colere Group was engaged as an independent evaluator by GRDC. Separate to the evaluation, Colere Group also facilitated two of the project’s face-to-face workshops (Mildura in June 2022 and the final project workshop in Sydney, May 2023). This enabled the lead evaluator to establish relationships across the project team and gain a deeper understanding of the project. The evaluation has been informed by desktop review of project documentation (as available prior to 10 May 20231), observations at the workshops and monthly online meetings and semi- structured interviews of the project team and Steering Committee. Insights from the evaluation guided the discussion topics at the final project workshop, however this workshop was not an evaluation workshop and forms part of the project’s research activities.