Webinar 2: Biologicals – a glimpse into the future

Australia’s agricultural competitiveness has long been built on innovation, collaboration and a strong commitment to research and development—combined with a willingness of producers to adopt new technologies to drive productivity across the sector. With biologicals moving rapidly from niche to mainstream—and the global market projected to surpass USD 30–35 billion by 2030—momentum is building for bio-based solutions across crop protection, soil health and sustainable production systems.

In the second webinar in ATSE’s Agriculture and Food Beyond the Bite series, Biologicals – a glimpse into the future, features a diverse panel spanning research, industry and end user and international experts will unpack not only the promise but also the practicalities—highlighting opportunities and challenges across regulation, scalable manufacturing, cost and real-world adoption of BioSolutions. Critically, the discussion will connect these innovations to the broader imperative of strengthening food and nutritional security, ensuring sustainable solutions can be delivered at scale for real impact on the ground.

What’s ahead in the Beyond the Bite series:

Future webinars in the series will explore key challenges and innovations shaping the future of Australian agriculture and food systems, including:

🧪 Nutrients and residue limits across the food supply chain
🏭 Enhancing productivity through value-added food processing
⚡ The role of biofuels in Australian agriculture

Date

Thursday 16 July 2026

Location

Online (Zoom)

Time

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Moderator

Professor Neena Mitter, an ATSE Fellow, is an agricultural biotechnologist with over 30 years of experience in delivering sustainable, climate-resilient solutions for food and nutritional security. She has led impactful translational research across India and Australia, leading large interdisciplinary research centres, building strong global collaborations and mentoring the next generation of scientific leaders. She is also the Director of the Australian Research Council Research Hub for Sustainable Crop Protection (2020–2026), which focuses on advancing RNA-based biopesticides for next-generation crop protection.

Over the past 15 years, Professor Mitter’s research has centred on RNA for agriculture, spanning design through to delivery. She is internationally recognised for developing the environmentally sustainable BioClay platform for RNA-based crop protection. Her work advances clean, innovative technologies that enhance agricultural productivity, strengthen environmental sustainability, and support resilient farming systems.

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Speakers

Anna Madden is a farmer and agronomist with more than 30 years of hands-on field experience, grounded in a lifelong passion for agriculture and biodiversity shaped on her family’s farm in Central NSW. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Rural Science (Honours) from the University of New England. In 2020, Anna co-founded The Crop Capsules Company with her husband Steve, developing innovative large-scale biological control solutions for cropping systems. Their flagship product, CottonCap, enables the mass release of beneficial wasps to control silverleaf whitefly across tens of thousands of hectares of Australian cotton, transforming the scale of biocontrol in modern agriculture.

Mr Ian Corr

APAC Disease Control and Biologicals Segment Leader, Corteva Agriscience

Currently serving as Asia Pacific Biologicals Regional Segment Leader for Corteva Agriscience, Ian has over 20 years of experience in agriculture innovation and technology, working in various R&D and commercial roles across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the USA.  During these roles Ian has led multiple initiatives focused on improving agricultural input solutions and adoption of sustainable land management, and environmental stewardship.

Growing up on a cattle property in Queensland, and currently running a small farming operation in NSW, Ian has a strong connection to production Agriculture, and a focus on improving adoption of solutions for further advancing the performance and sustainability credentials of Agriculture.

Dr Louise Thatcher is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food. Based in Canberra, she leads a biopesticides science area and is a member of the Microbial Technologies team working on the discovery, improvement and deployment of beneficial microbes and microbial-derived products for crop protection, plant health and sustainable production. Her research aims to maintain or improve crop productivity under a resource-limited future, mitigate the impacts of resistance development in traditional crop protection controls, and safeguard agriculture in the face of emerging biosecurity threats. Prior, Louise was leader of the Break Crop Genomics and Crop Biologics teams, and Group Leader of Crop Protection at CSIRO encompassing research teams across Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. Born in Western Australia, Louise obtained a BSc with Honours (1999) and PhD (2007) in plant molecular biology and microbiology from the University of Western Australia. She completed two Postdoctoral Fellowships within CSIRO Plant Industry (Brisbane, Perth) researching Fusarium pathogenomics and crop disease susceptibility genes.

Dr Marrone has spent her 30+ year career focused on biological products for pest management and plant health, having started and led three bioag companies (Entotech, AgraQuest and Marrone Bio Innovations, now called Profarm Group), all of which were sold to larger companies. She is currently launching a fourth company, the Invasive Species Corporation and its Foundation, to deliver environmentally friendly solutions for invasive species control.

She serves on the board of the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, is a Senior Fellow at Arizona State University, and is Chair of Elicit‑Plant. She has received numerous awards, including the 2022 American Chemical Society Kathryn C. Hach Award, is a Fellow of the AAAS, and holds over 400 patents.

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Beyond the Bite series: Biologicals – a glimpse into the future

Webinar 2: Biologicals – a glimpse into the future