As the world seeks more sustainable and resilient food systems, there is growing interest in crops that can thrive in challenging conditions while delivering nutritional benefits. Sorghum is one of Australia's most climate-resilient grains, yet it is still used predominantly for animal feed. UQ researchers are using artificial intelligence and stakeholder-informed research to identify barriers and opportunities across the food supply chain, helping unlock the potential of sorghum as a food crop.
What's the problem?
Sorghum is Australia's third-largest cereal crop and is valued for its heat and drought tolerance. Despite its nutritional benefits, gluten-free status and suitability for Australian growing conditions, most Australian sorghum is used for animal feed or export markets rather than human food products.
Researchers and industry have invested significant effort into understanding the nutritional, sensory and functional properties of sorghum, yet adoption by the food industry has remained limited. Challenges exist across the supply chain, including sourcing and traceability issues, limited awareness of food-grade sorghum, insufficient access to specialised varieties, and low coordination between growers, breeders, processors, researchers and food manufacturers.
Understanding these interconnected barriers requires analysing large volumes of stakeholder perspectives and consumer insights, a traditionally time-intensive process.
What's UQ's innovation?
Researchers from UQ's Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) have combined food science, agricultural innovation and AI-assisted qualitative analysis to better understand the factors influencing sorghum adoption.
Led by Dr Jaqueline Moura Nadolny and Leila Kenzler, with collaborators including Professor Heather Smyth, Dr Joe Eyre and Ms Clare Wijngaarden, the project analysed interviews with 32 stakeholders across the sorghum supply chain, including breeders, grain traders, researchers, millers, food manufacturers and peak bodies, alongside five consumer focus groups involving 30 Australian consumers.
The team used AI-assisted thematic analysis to help organise transcripts, identify codes, group themes and visualise findings from large qualitative datasets. By combining researcher expertise with AI-supported analysis, the project identified recurring barriers and opportunities that influence the adoption of food-grade sorghum.
The findings revealed strong consumer openness to sorghum once they were introduced to the grain, while also highlighting critical industry challenges including limited market signals for food-grade sorghum, difficulties sourcing specialised varieties, gaps in traceability, and the need for stronger collaboration across the supply chain.
What's the impact?
The research provides one of the most comprehensive stakeholder-informed assessments of Australia's food-grade sorghum supply chain and offers practical evidence to guide future industry development.
The findings are helping researchers and industry partners identify strategies to increase adoption of sorghum in food products, improve supply-chain coordination and support the development of classification approaches that better reflect food-grade applications.
Importantly, the work is already contributing to research translation. Insights from the project have helped inform the Functional Sorghum Collective, a five-year Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC)-supported initiative designed to accelerate innovation, collaboration and value creation across Australia's sorghum industry.
By helping unlock the potential of a nutritious, climate-resilient crop, the project contributes to broader efforts to strengthen sustainable agriculture, build more resilient food systems and support future food security.
Did you know?
More than 70 per cent of consumers in the study had never heard of sorghum before participating. Yet after learning about the grain and tasting sorghum-based products, participants were overwhelmingly open to purchasing sorghum foods.
Led by
This work brings together expertise in food science, consumer research, agricultural innovation and AI-assisted data analysis through UQ's Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI).
Research Team
- Dr Jaqueline Moura Nadolny (Project lead)
- Leila Kenzler
- Professor Heather Smyth
- Dr Joe Eyre
- Ms Clare Wijngaarden
| AI Research Strength | Human-Centred AI |
|---|---|
| Industry Portfolio | Agriculture, Food & Sustainability |
| Key Partners | Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) Dr Michael Groszmann, GRDC genetic technologies manager Food and Beverage Accelerator (IP Voucher) |
| Key Project | From Feed to Food: A Stakeholder-Informed Evaluation of the Australian Supply Chain for Premium Repositioning of Sorghum (Food Quality and Preference). Research innovation Translation outcome |
| Supporting Link |
Published 15 September 2026