Drought Hub

Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub

The Mallee Regional Innovation Centre is a partner in the Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub. The Centre leads the North-West Irrigated Horticulture Node.

Drought preparedness

Droughts are a recurring feature of Australia’s highly variable environment and are exacerbated by a changing climate.

The Mallee Regional Innovation Centre works with our Victoria Hub partners to enhance the drought preparedness and resilience of Victoria’s agricultural industries, the environment and regional communities.

Through wide-ranging engagement with industry and community stakeholders, we broker connections between the best available research and community and industry needs. Co-design with farmers, industry and regional communities leads to adoption of innovations to improve economic, environmental and social resilience to drought.

The drought cycle

The Hub uses this four-phase drought cycle explanation:

• The Good Period: average or above average rainfall and good conditions.
• The Uncertain Period: growing conditions are below average.
• The Drought Period: rainfall is consistently below average; several expected 'good events' don't occur.
• Recovery: rainfall increases, but farm businesses are recovering from drought.

View region specific information here.

The Mallee Regional Innovation Centre leads a regional node of the Victoria Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub.

The Victoria Hub is one of eight national hubs funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund to enhance drought preparedness and resilience through economic, environmental and community initiatives. The hub's focus expands beyond drought resilience to include broader agricultural innovation.

The Victoria Hub is a statewide partnership between four universities, the state government and five regionally well-connected and engaged farming groups.

It is led by the University of Melbourne’s Dookie Campus in association with La Trobe University, Deakin University, Federation University and Agriculture Victoria.

The hub is further supported by five regional nodes led by farming/industry groups: Birchip Cropping Group (NW Node), Riverine Plains (NE Node), Food & Fibre Gippsland (Gippsland Node), Southern Farming Systems (SW Node), and the Mallee Regional Innovation Centre (NW Irrigated Horticulture Node).

The hub represents a comprehensive approach to enhancing economic, environmental and social resilience to drought in order to create innovative and profitable sectors, sustainable and functioning landscapes, and resourceful and adaptable communities.