LATEST NEWS & MEDIA

30 Jun 2010 - Anti-cancer activity of tea tree oil

A report released today by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation has highlighted the positive role tea tree oil (TTO) may play in the future in treating people with skin cancer. More »»

30 Jun 2010 - Productivity Commission Submission

ATTIA has made a submission to the Productivity Commission on RRDCs. More »»

30 Oct 2009 - EMEA submission

The EMEA (European Medicines Agency) committee on herbal medicinal products called for scientific data to create a Monograph for tea tree oil as a Herbal Medicine in August 2009 More »»

19 Jun 2009 - New ATTIA website

Welcome to our new website. If you are a regular visitor you will notice quite a few changes - this will be progressive as the site is developed over the next few weeks. More »»

Research Articles

At the bottom of this page is a search tool to assist you to find research reports available on the ATTIA website. Please scroll to the bottom, select a category and click 'GO'.

A RIRDC research project, published in September 2005 by CF Carson, KA Hammer, TV Riley is a good place to start. A copy of this extensive list of Literature on TTO is available here: Published and Unpublished Tea Tree Oil Literature. This is a comprehensive list of literature on ATTO and is an excellent starting point for research into a wide variety of topics on tea tree oil.

ATTIA also conducts research in conjunction with RIRDC and the NSW DPI:

Tea Tree Breeding Program

Tea tree seed

Tea Tree seed scaled against an Australian 20 cent coin

The Australian tea tree oil industry has become an important regional industry in Australia with a farm-gate value in excess of $21M with 90% of oil exported. Australian producers, who face fluctuating tea tree oil prices and with growing international competition, need to have access to higher yielding varieties to achieve efficiencies of production if they are to remain economically viable in the long term.

The principal aim of the tea tree breeding program is to improve oil yields from selected lines of M alternifolia that were known to be the best yielding wild stock back in the days when all tea tree oil was harvested from natural stands in northern NSW. This project has been running since 1993 in partnership with the DPI and RIRDC and has released progressively improved seed to the industry that has increased oil yield from 148kg/ha prior to the start of breeding to around 250kg/ha. Seed was first released in 1997 and grower uptake has been excellent in Australia.

Flowering Tea Tree.JPG

Tea tree flowers at the Wyrallah orchard

RIRDC and ATTIA provided funding support of $402,700 for the three years ending June 2009 and a funding proposal for 2009 to 2014 has recently been approved by both ATTIA and RIRDC. Continued support from all project clients and stakeholders will ensure that growers can maximise oil production and profit through use of improved seed and clones and thus enhance the long-term viability of the Australian tea tree oil industry.

This current proposal (2009-2014) builds on four rounds (1993/96, 96/01, 01/06 and 06/09) of successful RIRDC/ATTIA tea tree breeding projects, where oil yields of plantations using project seed have been progressively increased from 148 kg/ha which was the industry average prior to the start of breeding to in excess of 250 kg/ha. This is equivalent to a 70-80% improvement achieved in a little more than a decade of selection and breeding. The almost doubling of returns to growers is very strong economic justification for the continuation of the breeding project. The NSW DPI have also provided a cash injection of AU$ 150,000.00 over the 5 years from 2009 to 2014.

Measuring plant height after 13 months Wollongbar.jpg

Measuring plant height and leafiness after 13 months at the DPI Wollongbar Institute

RIRDC tea tree oil research projects are ongoing and RIRDC produces Research in Progress summaries of continuing projects and those completed during 2007-2008. The intention is to:
• give stakeholders early access to the results of ongoing and completed work to inform their decisions, and
• to inform researchers of results to shape research directions.

The complete report on all programs for 2007-2008 is available here or alternatively on the RIRDC website at http://www.rirdc.gov.au

Other Research Information

There are several links to relevant RIRDC pages below for more detailed information on the collaborative research efforts of ATTIA and RIRDC as well as a link to the University of Western Australia tea tree oil research group who are at the forefront of much of the research into tea tree oil and utilise funding from ATTIA and RIRDC for many of the projects undertaken over the past 10 years.

Immediately below on this page is a search tool to assist you to find research reports available on the ATTIA website; these are selected key articles only. Please select a category and click 'GO'.