The wool industry is spending $1.4 million on a breakthrough shearing method that utilises a system of biological defleecing.
The technique is based on a protein from the corn plant called zein.
It is injected into sheep and produces a "break" in the fibre after just a few days, allowing the wool to be pulled off by hand.
Australian Wool Innovation chairperson Jock Laurie hopes the technology will solve the shortage of shearers, which has become a massive problem for wool growers.
"It's the number one issue in the Australian wool industry at the moment," he said.
AWI has been speeding up the work on the new system, Mr Laurie says, because shearing teams have said they are not prepared to go through the stress of another season with so few shearers.
Some wool growers say it has been costing them more to shear a sheep than they get for the wool.
"To be able to provide woolgrowers with options, I think is going to be absolutely critical to keeping them in the game," Mr Laurie said.
Peeling wool off 'like an orange'
The Adelaide University research team, led by Phil Hynd, has been working on the zein protein technology that is based on research initially carried out by the CSIRO.
"We finally cracked it last year," Professor Hynd said.
"The way it is working is through a mechanism that is operating in the wool follicle that hardens the fibre."
Although the pathway to a better system to harvest wool is strewn with failures, Professor Hynd believes they are on the right track this time.
"We are very confident now that this is the way to go for the wool industry," he said.
Researchers need to refine how the protein is injected and develop new ways to harvest the wool.
That could be carried out by hand, perhaps using a comb rather than shears, or perhaps an air-driven system to speed up the process.
"We developed with AWI, some time ago, a hand-held machine which peels the wool off like an orange peel and it doesn't need any skill to operate," Professor Hynd said.In the long term, Professor Hynd wants to see a fully automated system that peels the wool off, with sheep moving through on conveyor belts, and a vacuum picking up the wool and classing it automatically.
The protein-injecting system will need to be approved by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority but, without a clear idea about how to harvest the wool, commercial trials could be quite a few years away.
"We're on a tight schedule with AWI to deliver the injectable solution in 18 months," Professor Hynd said.
While Professor Hynd does not know far off the "engineering solution" is for harvesting the wool, he says the new defleecing method will provide the long-awaited change for the wool industry to move into automation.
What do wool growers think?
Helen Carrigan runs a self-replacing Merino stud in the Northern New South Wales town of Garah and is the deputy chairperson of the NSW Farmers Wool Committee.
Although she can't see how the technology will be applied on her large farm, and has concerns about the wool dropping off the sheep out in the field, she isn't going to dismiss it yet.
"It may not necessarily suit all applications and all types of country, but, from what I've been told, the research looks very interesting," Ms Carrigan said.
While Ms Carrigan believes the industry will always need shearers, she says biological defleecing could be another useful tool.
"It will probably have a better uptake than previous attempts," she said.
