University of Adelaide researcher Phil Hynd is confident his team have "jumped a lot of the hurdles and are on the home straight" developing a biological alternative to shearing.
But he says it could take until late 2029 to be a commercial reality and the costs of a manual or automated wool removal system are a big unknown.
Prof Hynd provided an update at the recent International Wool Textile Organisation held in Adelaide, outlining the breakthrough they had made identifying a naturally occurring chemical found in plants that can be injected into the sheep like a vaccine to weaken the wool.
This allows the wool to stay on the animal until it is mechanically removed three to six weeks later.
In that time the wool has grown a couple of centimetres on the animal the plan is for it to be plucked or vaccumed from the sheep.
He says it is a concept he first thought about 20 years ago and is different to other failed industry attempts such as Bioclip which required a lot of labour putting the nets on and removing them.
Prof Hynd says his team are working with pharmacologists on a slow release pellet containing the drug which can be injected subcutaneously into the sheep.
The next step will be to check the effects of the drug on different sheep breeds, types and regions and their health status prior to seeking Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority registration.
"You can't skip on the APVMA because it is human heath as well as animal health we are talking about," he said.
"It can take five years but on a fast track hopefully we can get some assistance from politicians and could get that sped up and done in a shorter period."
He stressed the work funded by Australian Wool Innovation and the Davies Livestock Research Centre was only half of the necessary innovation.
In October last year AWI issued a request for proposals from engineering firms, universities and entrepreneurs around the world to develop technology to remove the biologically weakend wool and grade the fibres.
AWI is progressing with four of these 14 proposals
"It takes a bit to get your head around that fleece throwing is no longer there, it is fibres we are dealing with not a fleece," he said
"Engineers are used to working with materials in a pristine environment so working with hot, dirty sheep with burrs and seeds could be a challenge."
If successful Prof Hynd says it will be a gamechanger for better animal welfare with less handling at shearing and a better quality product with uniform length fibres and no locks or skin pieces.
Importantly it will hopefully bring down the cost of production with shearing currently accounting for about 20 per cent of the industry's costs.
"If this was easy finding alternative to shearing it would already have been done by now but we have made a breakthrough that makes it possible and I have a strong belief we can make it work on farm," Prof Hynd said.
