Oyster farming contributes almost $100 million to the Australian economy each year and is especially important in NSW, where it represents 30 per cent of all seafood production.
The predominantly family-owned industry is, however, constantly endangered by outbreaks of devastating and unpredictable oyster disease events.
In the past 20 years, disease has led to mass oyster death and, ultimately, the closure of harvesting regions across NSW and Tasmania, costing the industry many millions of dollars.
Now, funding from an Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage grant brings together scientists from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the University of NSW (UNSW) and the NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) with the aim of giving the Australian oyster industry unprecedented capacity to forecast disease outbreaks.
Read the full story in the UTS Newsroom.