Travel funding to attend the Agriculture and Climate Change Conference in March 2017 in Spain for one researcher. The conference focused on the likely impact of climate change on crop production and explored approaches to maintain and increase crop productivity in a changing climate. Approximately 300 delegates attended the conference, and thus provided an opportunity for numerous seminars, posters and discussions on climate change research in a diverse range of crops. The themes for the sessions included: increased agricultural uncertainty; modelling and its application; impacts on nutrition, quality and resource use efficiency; abiotic stress; effects of CO2 on plant growth; plant-microbe interactions; innovative agronomic and breeding practices; and new crops for a new climate.

A couple of the particularly interesting oral presentations included the agronomic and metabolic responses of rice during simultaneous heat and drought stress and subsequent recovery; and the impact of elevated CO2 concentrations on interactions between grapevines and the pathogen Plasmopara viticola ). Other interesting presentations highlighted some of the other climate research that is conducted in Australia. For instance, an interesting presentation about adapting to risk in marginal dryland cropping systems of Southern Australia and one Australian Researcher presented research on the implications of a changing climate for pastures and the Australian dairy industry. Several of the presentations re-enforced that climate change offers exploitable opportunities that we need to utilise in order to offset potential losses in production. The opportunity was taken also to have a conversation with Dr Kenneth Boote about the use of models in capturing responses to elevated atmospheric [CO2]. Several papers are referenced in the presentations that will be useful to read, and the opportunity to participate in an Author workshop run by Elsevier that gave hints and tips for publishing research articles in high quality journals.

Australian research was well received by the international scientific community. This was an exciting opportunity to showcase research conducted in the Australian Cotton Industry, and there was a lot of interest regarding how the cotton industry operates in Australia. There was significant interest from other scientists regarding our in-field chambers and the experiments being conducted in the facility. It was clear that the Australian approach was novel and unique in this area, with presentations generating discussions about the importance of in-field research into climate change interactions. This trip was important to begin linkages with European agricultural scientists, in addition to our close collaborations with U.S. research. A number of scientistsindicated an expression of interest in continuing discussions and looking for collaborations in this area.