Request for Proposal
Horticulture Innovation Australia (Hort Innovation) is a not-for-profit, grower-owned Research and Development Corporation (RDC) for Australia’s close to $16.3 billion horticulture industry. Hort Innovation invests around $120 million in research and development (R&D) and marketing programs annually to provide benefit to industry and the wider community.
Hort Innovation is seeking a suitably qualified, experienced and capable delivery partner for the project: Better understanding phytophthora rot of papaya (PP23001).
This work aims to improve our understanding of phytophthora and the mechanism by which the disease causes damage to papaya. The overall objective of the work is to improve our understanding of phytophthora and use this information to develop integrated management strategies for field control.
The work will aim to address the following key objectives:
- Undertaking a gap analysis of papaya phytophthora including information of the causal agent(s), management approaches, and the conditions under which plant susceptibility increases. All published resources should be reviewed and analysed including those published in our industries and countries.
- Developing a high throughput tool to quantify phytophthora fungal load in the soil and establishing the relationship between fungal load in the soil and overall disease pressure.
- Exploring and comparing the sequence of phytophthora-related genes of healthy and diseased papaya plants to identify potential targets for effective disease management. Genes and proteins that are associated with pathogenicity should receive particular attention.
Effective implementation of this work will be driven by the following two principles:
- Direct industry engagement to ensure practice change and adoption. Critical to this is the engagement of key growers ensuring a two-way exchange of information between researchers and growers.
- Consideration of how R&D outputs will impact other aspects of orchard management and how these can be integrated to create a harmonised systems approach.
Hort Innovation has prepared a Request for Proposal (RFP) document that provides background information, outlines the scope of services, the procurement process and the information required from interested parties.
The RFP may be downloaded from www.tenders.net (you will need to be a member of tenders.net to access this information).
The closing date for responses is 15 May 2024, 3:00 PM (AEST).