Biofuels - North America and India are into it in a big way, Brazil wants everyone to play, and China is spending a packet to join in. Now a group of Queensland biotechnologists have teamed up with the Swiss to sweeten the game.

With the lifting of two moratoria on genetically modified crops in Australia recently, so did the inevitably polarised debate take off. Those for and against are unlikely to change their minds and, unfortunately, some scientists are now afraid to speak theirs.

US crop scientists discover gene that controls fruit shape.

Australia's durum wheat growers have extra reason to be worried as the worst drought in two centuries provides a grim foretaste of the Infernal Century. However, a chance discovery of a salt-tolerance gene from decades-old seed lines is looking promising.

CSIRO scientists have combined disease resistance genes in wild wheat varieties.

A vaccine for fowlpox developed by the CSIRO has been released commercially.

Studying the symbiotic relationship between legumes and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria raises the possibility of a potential application in cereals.

Did the evolution of C4 photosynthesis pathways in grasses helped kick-start modern human evolution as well?

Extra funding announced for Australia's centre for plant genomics.

Professor German Spangenberg is arguably Australia's leading researcher into plant genetics and genomics.

A lucky coincidence has led Australian plant researchers to two new genes responsible for salt tolerance in wheat.

NSW scientists are researching how to develop a freeze-dried form of the rabbit Calicivirus to improve its effectiveness.

The big names in the world of rice genomics will gather in Adelaide this August for the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology (ISPMB) congress. Kate McDonald spoke to CSIRO Plant Industry's Dr Narayana Upadhyaya about progress in his field, rice functional genomics.

Sequencing of the cattle genome is nearly complete and will herald a revolution in breed improvement.

The Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (ABIC) is being held in Melbourne this year, bringing with it such names as Alan Colman, Jennifer Thomson and Robert Wall. With Australia's economy still so reliant on the land, Graeme O'Neill takes a look at what our neighbours across the pond can teach us about harnessing the power of biotechnology in agriculture.

The research community is becoming more sophisticated in the way they approach intellectual property and industry partnerships. Ruth Beran looks at how technology transfer has changed, where it is going and the challenges it faces.

Biotechnology has provided a solution to the problem of how to get science to the market without compromising research, writes editor-in-chief Iain Scott.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told AusBiotech 2005 about opportunities for Australian biotech to work with India.

US venture capitalist Osagie Imasogie told AusBiotech 2005 that biotech companies need to get aggressive when it comes to finding opportunities.

In many places in the world, 'biotechnology' only means agricultural biotech. The same can't be said in Australia, where GM technology is a dirty word. But could economics and technology force Australia to change its views on biotech crops to keep up with the rest of the world?

Cochlear boss Chris Roberts has spent 30 years at Australia's leading device companies -- but that doesn't mean he has stopped learning, as Helen Schuller discovers.

Australian Biotechnology News editor-in-chief Iain Scott spoke with renowned industry analyst Cynthia Robbins-Roth about what it will take to keep biotech alive.

Dr John Raff tells Graeme O'Neill why Australia's agbiotech industry is struggling.

On a wall at CSIRO Plant Industry's Merbein laboratories, is an old photo-micrograph of a grapevine floral bud. Dr Nigel Steele Scott, head of Plant Industry's horticultural research laboratories in Glen Osmond, South Australia, says it's his favourite image -- a portent of a revolution in viticulture that is still having an enormous impact on the Australian wine industry today.

History students and trivia buffs in the distant future time will be grateful for one of history's little coincidences -- the Human Genome Project will be completed this year, 2003, a neat half-century after the elucidation of the structure of DNA.

Nobel Laureate Prof Peter Doherty is lending his name to a new prize to be awarded at Australia's first Commercialisation Forum and Fair of Ideas, which started in Sydney today and runs to March 28.

Phil Batterham is a skilled and meticulous organiser, with an understanding of the value of theatre. When the University of Melbourne geneticist flew to Beijing in 1998 for the 18th International Congress of Genetics, he had already spent two years organising Australia's bid to bring the world's biggest genetics festival to Melbourne in 2003.

The land of the red 'roo is a long hop from just about everywhere else in the world, so travel costs loomed large in Dr Phil Batterham's analysis of the cost of staging the world's largest genefest in Melbourne next year.

Next year, 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of an epochal moment in human history: Watson and Crick's solving of the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule. It's also the year that will bring many of the biggest names in world genetics to Melbourne for the 19th International Genetics Congress, among them at least three Nobel laureates, including James Watson, co-discoverer of the immortal coil, and an immortal of modern science in his own lifetime.

Scientist-turned-financier Dr Kevin Healey is one of an elite group which has used its life science credentials as a springboard to make a splash as venture capitalists.

Microarray technology is now a major tool available to the geneticist. The technology allows researchers to look at the expression of a vast array of genes simultaneously, and myriad applications have been found in the last few years. But deciding on the best microarray system for the needs of the research is a difficult task, with several choices available.

When you think of the Human Genome Project, images of banks of sequencing machines pumping out millions of base pairs of information comes to mind. According to Dr John Barlow, Melbourne divisional manager of the Australian Genome Research Facility, state-of-the-art sequencing is still largely electrophoresis-based. However, sequencers have come a long way since the days of pouring your own sequencing gel and using radioactive dideoxynucleotides.