The Tropical North Queensland Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub (TNQ Hub), led by JCU, is paving the way to deliver drought resilience activities in tropical north Queensland. The TNQ Hub sits within the Cairns Institute and is designed to bring together land managers, communities, researchers and industry to collaborate and co-design innovative approaches and solutions for drought resilience in TNQ.

To do this, the TNQ Hub has partnered with six natural resource management groups across tropical north Queensland and developed a number of Programs and activities that are being led by several JCU staff members including Prof Stewart Lockie, Prof Allan Dale, Prof Yvette Everingham, Dr Jane Oorschot and Dr Rachel Hay.

These Programs and activities are fostering resilience through the increase of agricultural production knowledge, better decision making, opportunities for Indigenous communities, establishing new agtech enterprises, building human capacity and skills and supporting the uptake of innovation across the agricultural industry.

TNQ Hub Director, David Phelps says, “2023 is going to be a big year for the TNQ Hub. We are in the middle of delivering several community workshops that build on leadership and governance skills, running agtech trials on JCU’s Fletcherview Research Station, facilitating a Regional Drought Resilience Strategy to build resilience across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Councils across Queensland, designing a business assessment program for farmers to help encourage resilience, developing tools to increase ESG framework knowledge and delivering agricultural business growth programs.

“We have also supported seven Honours and Masters scholarships for JCU students and are working on other JCU researcher led projects that focus on resilience and bring together other universities, grower groups and all levels of government.

“The TNQ Hub is extremely well positioned to bring together many different groups with the common goal of supporting the agricultural industries and communities that rely on our graziers, growers and farmers. This can also be seen through several grants we have submitted EOI to and have been awarded.”

The TNQ Hub is actively encouraging participation from all JCU staff and students who have an interest in being involved in enhancing drought preparedness and resilience in the tropical north Queensland region.