AUSTRALIAN Wool Innovation has long been criticised for its 60:40 percentage spending split of wool levy funding between marketing and research, development and extension (RD&E).
But AWI chief executive officer Stuart McCullough says it's important to focus on dollar commitment rather than percentages.
Since 2009/2010 the RD&E spend had in fact grown by 198 per cent from $8.9 million to $17.5m in 2014/15.
It's these funds that have allowed AWI's research manager Dr Paul Swan to ramp up projects.
This year his team established over 100 wild dog groups covering more than 2.3 million square kilometres of Australia.
Dr Swan said they also exceeded their target of training 1500 shearers and 1000 shed hands this year, with 3747 trained within budget.
From that group, 79pc reported they improved the quality of their skills following training, while more than 60pc reported they improved the speed at which they do the job (an average of 10 sheep a day more).
Dr Swan said reproduction remained an important challenge for the Australian wool and sheep industry and AWI had worked hard to improve this primarily with its Lifetime Ewe Management (LTEM) program.
At present 20pc of the national ewe base has graduated from the LTEM program, and Dr Swan said the aim was to reach 50pc graduates.
This year, 21 group facilitators travelled 32,715km to implement the LTEM program for 58 groups.