The Poggendorff Award and Lectureship recognises distinguished research in any area of the Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, conducted mainly in New South Wales. Recipients may be resident in Australia or elsewhere.

The Poggendorff Award and Lectureship honours Walter Poggendorff, an eminent biologist and noted plant breeder in the 1930s and 40s, and his bequest to the Society to support a Lectureship. It was first awarded in 1987 and in 2023 Council designated it the Royal Society of NSW Poggendorff Award and Lectureship.

Walter Poggendorff was a biologist and plant breeder with a particular interest in the breeding of rice. In 1928, the Yanco Rice Research Station was established by the NSW Department of Agriculture with approximately 670 acres just south of Leeton on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River.  A brilliant young biologist, Walter Poggendorff was transferred there as an assistant plant breeder.

Poggendorff’s early accomplishments included recognizing the need to quarantine imported rice and producing strains of rice that were able to offer growers late, mid-season, early and very early short-grain varieties.  He also developed similar long-grain strains but these were not required by the market until much later.  Poggendorff is recognised as one of the major figures in establishing the Australian rice industry, developing high-yield crops for Australian conditions and maintaining controls on imports to limit the introduction of serious diseases. Poggendorff’s work was not confined to rice — in the 1930s and 1940s, he worked with peaches, apricots, pears, almonds, grapes and rock melons. Later, he became Chief of the Division of Plant Industry in the NSW Department of Agriculture.

When he died in 1981, he made a bequest to the Royal Society of NSW to fund a lecture.