Current as of 31/05/2023

Since retiring from ACIAR in 2005, I have been fortunate to have had a very productive 17 years as full time Honorary Scientist at CSIRO Agriculture and Food. I was actively involved in-house discussions and mentoring, as well as publishing past wheat research, joint papers on other CSIRO crop research, and reviews about larger issues relating especially to crops, agricultural science and world food security. In the period I was an author on about 35 scientific publications (first author on over one half) and my citation record has boomed (H factor around 52). The biggest achievement was the 2014 book "Crop yield and global food security: will yield increase continue to feed the world?", coauthored with Edmeades and Byerlee; this has been cited over 1000 times according to G Scholar. I was also invited to present about a dozen times or so at conferences in Australia and overseas, and served on the CGIAR Wheat Coordinated Research Program's International Steering Committee, becoming Chair for 4 years. Since moving on 30 June 2022 to ANU as a visiting scientist at the Research School of Biology, I have dropped back to 3 or 4 days a week on such activities, and don't anticipate much more international travel for professional reasons. However, there are still crop science issues that I hope to write about, and plenty of mentoring opportunities.

Tony Fischer, a world-recognised cereal crop physiologist, was the first Australian to lead the world's top wheat breeding team at CIMMYT (Mexico) which produces benefits exceeding $70 million per annum to Australian farmers.

He strengthened CIMMYT' s strategic research capability and outreach, linked CIMMYT to researchers in Australia and many developing countries, tirelessly promoted CIMMYT's achievements and built international confidence in CIMMYT's performance. Previously at CSIRO he conducted innovative research on the physiology of grain yield and catalysed collaboration between CSIRO Divisions, NSW Agriculture and farmers in NSW.

He currently manages a large, internationally collaborative crop research program at ACIAR.