The resources boom has overshadowed Australia’s traditional strength as a primary producer but today crops are more vital than ever to feed not just ourselves but also an ever-expanding worldwide population. Global warming is making new crop varieties – those that are drought-resistant and salinity-tolerant, for example – crucial.
To ensure the continued security of our food production environment and make farming once again a viable occupation, funding from Commonwealth and State Governments, the University of Adelaide and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) was raised to plan and build a Plant Accelerator at the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility (APPF).
The Plant Accelerator is a ‘super greenhouse’, containing 50 high-tech glasshouses and laboratories. Up to 160,000 plants per year move along nearly a kilometre of conveyor belts delivering them to state of the art computerised photographic systems that capture their performance under a variety of conditions to enable plant varieties to be improved.
Download the full Australian Plant Phenomics case study here (approx 1MB)
This Case Study for Australian Plant Phenomics Facility is provided by Datacom.