Innovation assists agricultural industries to remain competitive. Experts are important because their skills are used to develop adopted products from innovative ideas. This essential to meet predicted increased demands for food over the next half century (Anon September 2009).This- personal analysis questions whether Australia has enough experts and skills to drive the process of innovation from which new and improved products are developed. The focus is on RD&E that involves agricultural industries, governments and Rural Industry Research Councils (RIRCs). It's an operational perspective from the standpoint of experts who have responsibility for planning, implementing and reporting RD&E. It offers ideas on retrieval and how overall structure of RD&E in agriculture can be improved to better meet future challenges.Experts involved in RD&E are diverse with careers in industry or government. Industry is used in its broadest sense and can include farmers, representative farm leadership groups, companies and organisations that provide services to primary production. Similarly, government experts can include regulatory, policy, economic and RD&E in various disciplines. Common characteristics are specific qualifications and extensive experience in an industry or government environment and their unique capacity to add value through maturity of judgement. Cumulative experience results in higher quality advice and decisions that frequently influence policy and operations of government or industry.Industry and government experts provided essential guidance and advice in development of the Plant Plan and the Emergency Plant Pest Deed. Both documentsguide biosecurity operations of Plant Health Australia. Industry expertise was critical in providing insight to operations for storing harvested grain and the associated risks of pests acquiring resistance to phosphine.At least six issues have contributed to expert capacity decline over the past 30 years: tight budgets, responsibility of investors, inflexibility of co-investment organisations, unintended consequences of user-pays funding of RD&E, reduced capabilities in career development and uncertainty over commitment to adopted products.The conclusion is that experts are in decline, which will gradually impact by reducing competitiveness of Australian plant industries, especially in international markets. Further analysis is recommended and if the question of decline of experts is confirmed then impact on agriculture and retrieval of capability should also be considered. This situation has particular relevance because agricultural organisations need strategies to capture the predicted increased demand for food. Industry and rural communities should also benefit.
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