Alan Bedggood, Chief Executive Officer and National Variety Trials Manager

Alan joined ACAS in 2004 and oversees the company’s activities. He is responsible for coordinating and monitoring the National Variety Trials to ensure the timely and accurate entry, collection and publication of trial results. 

Alan has considerable experience in plant breeding programs and the management of crop variety trials. He came to ACAS from the Victorian department of Primary Industries where he was Coordinator of the Victorian Crop Evaluation Unit. 

Neale Sutton, NVT Operations Manager

Neale joined ACAS in 2007 and his role is to support the NVT Manager in the operations of the NVT program. Neale assists Alan Bedggood on all aspects of the program, for growers, advisors, trial operators and breeders alike. 
 
Neale has a degree in Agricultural Science (2003) and has previously worked with Nufarm Chemicals. After some time travelling overseas, Neale has settled in a position that he feels will build upon his family farming background and university qualifications.

Greg Bowey, NVT Technical Support

Greg joined ACAS in December 2009. Greg has previously worked with the Victorian Department of Primary Industries in the Farm Services area. He has a farming background from the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia and an Agricultural degree from the University of Adelaide.

Mark Luckey, Information Technology Manager

Mark is principal of Storyboard Multimedia Australia and has a background in R&D, agriculture, IT project management, strategic IT consultancy, offshore software development and organisational process improvement.

Mark is the conceptual designer of the NVT Online database and is response for managing the ACAS software development program.

The Board of ACAS Limited 

ACAS represents the interests of Australian grain growers through its trustees - the Grains Council of Australia, Grains Research and Development Corporation and the Australian Seed Federation. The Primary Industries Standing Committee is also represented.

Executive Chairman - Joe Coad

Joe was Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Seeds Pty Ltd until recently and has more than 40 years’ experience in the seeds industry. Joe currently represents Agricote for the Royal Barenbrug Group in the Asia Pacific region. He is a Past-President of the Australian Seed Federation.  

ASF Representative – Bill Fuller

Bill was appointed CEO of the Australian Seed Federation (ASF) in mid-2011 and joined the ACAS board shortly after. He comes from a dairy farming background and has a degree in Agricultural Science, Graduate Diploma in Agribusiness and an MBA (Executive). Bill has worked as a stock and station agent and on a number of State Primary Industries major projects, he has also had senior sales and marketing roles with Incitec Pivot and most recently PGG Wrightson Seeds before moving to the ASF. His diverse, but Agribusiness focussed background leaves him well suited as an ACAS director.

GPA representative - Hugh Roberts

Hugh is a farmer from Cootamundra in New South Wales. He is a registered seed grower and has more than 40 years’ experience in crop production. 

GRDC representative - Tony Kent

Tony is currently an independent consultant advising agribusiness and food crop production development & extension projects in Australia and South East Asia. He has held board and executive roles in seed and grains businesses, grower organisations and government agencies. He is a former director of the Quality Wheat CRC, Graingene, LongReach PB and several AWB Limited subsidiaries. He played a key role in establishing the LongReach PB wheat breeding company, as a foundation director and then as General Manager from 2002-2009.

Tony brings experience to the board in cereal variety development and commercialisation and in R&D management across disciplines including genomics, cereal quality, market research and agronomy. Tony’s involvement with the grain industry began in 1973 when he joined Hannaford Seeds as a mobile seed grader operator.

Primary Industries Standing Committee – Delia Dray