HAVING visited farming operations across North America and Europe, Robert Harrison believes Western Australia's farmers are some of the most innovative in the world.
Growing up in Wongan Hills, Mr Harrison, 28, took some time off after completing his degree in environmental biology and agriculture at Curtin University to travel.
Visiting agricultural operations in Canada and America, he spent some time in Spain before settling on a dairy farm in England for about six months.
"I have some family in the north east of England that pushed me in the right direction, so I worked on their dairy farm for a while doing tasks like silage and hay production," Mr Harrison said.
With little knowledge of Australia's own dairy and pasture industry at the time, Mr Harrison quickly learnt the ropes.
"They're long days milking the cows twice a day, and I think they were getting about 13 pence per litre of milk back then, so it was a hard slog for not much return," Mr Harrison said.
With soil nutrition a bit of a "low priority" in England at the time, Mr Harrison said Western Australian farmers were 20 years ahead of their northern hemisphere counterparts, in some areas.
"In England they haven't really had to invest in the same technologies we have to keep their soil nutrition up, whereas our farmers are well versed in farming sandy soils with little nutrients," he said.
"WA farmers are often planting their crops in soils that aren't that different to the sand found on Scarborough Beach, so it's phenomenal what they get out of them - the quality of grain is magnificent."
However, Mr Harrison highlighted that we could perhaps learn a thing or two from England in regards to some of the environmental approaches they have in place for their agricultural industry.
"Over there, the pastures have to comprise a minimum of three legume species so they can be eligible for government grants, so being a bit of a legume fan myself, I think that would be a great thing that we could push for here in Australia," Mr Harrison said.
After returning to WA, working on a few farms and completing a harvest, he had a clearer picture of which area he wanted to specialise in and enrolled in an honours degree in crop and pasture science at Murdoch University.
While completing his studies he was offered a casual position at Murdoch University as a research technician.
"The technicians set up trials, seed and harvest them and apply fertiliser, herbicides etc, so it's like being a farmer but without having the stress of owning a farm," Mr Harrison said.
Since completing his honours he has been promoted to the role of research officer, in which he is tasked with designing and carrying out experiments all over WA, mainly focussed on dryland agriculture.
Enjoying the independence of his current role compared to that of a research technician, Mr Harrison said he had learnt the importance of having good contacts in the industry.
"The farmers are paying your wage, so it's important to understand their problems and that they see value in your research," Mr Harrison said.
"Talking to them every week and then extending our research back to them is a real highlight of my work."
Murdoch's Centre for Rhizobium Studies has provided a solid base for Mr Harrison's keen interest in carpology and more specifically, legume seeds, enabling him to learn from leading experts in this field, including pasture breeder Bradley Nutt.
"Brad has taught me a lot over the years and he and a few others actually invented the technology for summer sowing, which marries seed ecology with the agricultural system," Mr Harrison said.
"He identified by sowing unscarified seeds in February the hard seed breaks down and then germinates at the right time, so it utilises the full growing season, creates better water use efficiencies and more nitrogen fixation for the subsequent crops and more feed for sheep and cattle."
Mr Harrison was recently the lead author of one of the centre's scientific publications, which examined how the long-term storage of legumes alters the hard seed breakdown pattern in-situ.
"The topic was not the focus of the broad study and when we didn't have access to fresh legume seed for an experiment we opted to use old seed instead," Mr Harrison said.
"It was a case of serendipity.
"Because of that, we identified when we put in fresh and stored legume seed there was a huge gap between the hard seed breakdown patterns - and this discovery could create better on farm efficiencies if linked with summer sowing."
Attracted to the farming lifestyle, Mr Harrison said he would love to own his own farm down the track, but for now was enjoying being able to extend his research to farmers nationally and internationally.
"If a farm was to lock me into one area I would find that a little bit scary as I would like to observe agriculture everywhere," Mr Harrison said.
With a few work opportunities being cancelled this year due to COVID-19 restrictions, including a trip to Greece to study germplasms in the Mediterranean Basin, Mr Harrison hopes to begin a PhD in the space of legume seeds and breeding in the near future.
"Being able to extend our research, right from the grassroots to the farmers paddock is really what I enjoy most, so if I can keep doing that, I'll be happy."