ANU and CSIRO open agriculture research lab

The Australian National University (ANU) and the CSIRO have officially opened a collaborative centre that will focus on technologies relevant to environment, agriculture and global food supplies.

The ANU-CSIRO Centre for Genomics, Metabolomics and Bioinformatics (CGMB) aims to make discoveries in plant biological science that will benefit environmental management and crop deployment. By training researchers and stimulating projects in transformational agriculture, it is looking to “foster advances essential to food security and environmental stewardship in the face of climate change, population growth and land degradation”, said centre director Professor Eric Stone.

Located across various sites on the ANU campus and the neighbouring CSIRO Black Mountain facility, the centre includes a laboratory and computer facility, a joint mass spectroscopy facility and glasshouses. The centre will include an Ecogenomics and Bioinformatics Lab (EBL), enabling researchers to generate and analyse data at the same time in the same location. It will also make use of the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) on the ANU campus.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt AC said the partnership between the two institutions has already led to groundbreaking research in photosynthesis, plant immunity, disease resistance and energy-efficient crops. CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall added, “This hub of collaboration will further enable CSIRO and ANU to work together through the process of discovery, invention and innovation to deliver benefit to Australia and the world from their breakthrough advances in biological and data sciences.”

The centre is receiving funding from the federal government’s Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF), of which Dr Marshall is trustee, and is part of the ANU-CSIRO science precinct known as the National Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Precinct.