The University of Queensland (UQ) is working to improve crop productivity and secure future food supplies with its new $65 million Plant Futures Facility. Fitted out with technology to finely control temperature, light intensity, light quality, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration, the space will allow researchers to study plant responses to future climates.
The rate of food production per land area needs to increase to feed a 2050 global population of 9.5 billion, and experiments in the facility will help Queensland support this effort, through expanding knowledge of the relationship between a plant’s genome and the environment.
The high-tech building includes rooms to mimic various environments: from rainforests to deserts. Construction of the 6-floor facility started at the St Lucia campus in late 2021, and the first seeds will be brought into the facility this month after a rigorous commissioning period.
UQ Vice-Chancellor and professor, Deborah Terry, said the building – created specifically for plants – was unique in both scale and precision in the southern hemisphere.
“This facility is an important national asset and reinforces the position of Australia, Queensland and UQ as a leader in plant science research,” said Terry.
“Being able to accurately control every aspect of the growing environment opens up opportunities for precision plant science and to fast track experiments.”
The facility has a range of capabilities. As plants grow in the rooms, cameras and sensors will capture images and data for analysis. Between the 3 floors of grow rooms, glasshouses and laboratories are 2 levels of mechanical and computer equipment. Nine rooftop glasshouses, four for temperate plants and five for tropical plants, help restore some of the capacity the university lost in the 2022 Brisbane River flood.
Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry secretary, Adam Fennessy said the organisation works in close partnership with industry and university partners to innovate and maintain international leadership, and research facilities like this were essential.
“Adaptation to climatic changes requires continued investment in research and development, with sustainability credentials in food systems increasingly demanded by governments, investors and consumers globally,” said Fennessy.
“Working with industries, governments and research institutions is important to ensure our policy and program solutions promote productivity growth, secure improved access to international markets and safeguard our animal and plant health status.
“Research facilities, such as The University of Queensland Plant Futures Facility, are critical to be able to do research onshore to deliver these outcomes for Australian agriculture.”
The new Plant Futures Facility extends UQ’s involvement in the Australian Plant Phenomics Network, a research infrastructure network with other platforms located at the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University, offering researchers open access to end-to-end plant phenotyping solutions.
Director of the UQ-led ARC Centre for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture, professor Christine Beveridge, said researchers are still discovering fundamental things about how plants work – what makes them flower, branch or have big, small or thick leaves.
“This unique building will advance our knowledge of plant biology and help us speed up the development of crops for particular environments and give advice to farmers making choices in the light of weather forecasts,” said Beveridge.
“We can now expose the same genetic material to slightly different temperatures or to lighting that simulates different day lengths to see how it responds while keeping everything else about the environment the same.
“This level of control was not possible before the construction of this specialised building and the technology it contains.
“The more we understand the interplay between genetics and the environment, the more we can predict what will happen to plants in a future with climate change,” she said.
Recently, concerns around future food systems have been everywhere in the industry. Hort Innovation’s Frontiers investment program announced a $41 million tree crop program in August, bringing together growers and plant scientists to accelerate the development of new almond, apple, citrus, macadamia and mango varieties.
La Trobe University is collaborating with crop cultivation solutions organisation, Gaia Project Australia, on a vertical farming system that can thrive in a controlled and contained environment to maximise land efficiency.
As researchers begin to tackle these problems, the responsibility of the food and beverage industry is to help support these projects and raise awareness amongst the general public, to give scientists as much time as possible to create sustainable processes.
