Robert Henry gazes ruefully northwards from the University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus, caught between feeling excited and a niggling regret. “There’s a supermarket out there … but most Australians don’t even know it,” he said.
Australian researchers have turned to plant genetics to help solve DNA mysteries and create the horticultural tree crops of the future under a new $11.3 million joint research project.
Winter cereal cropping in northern Queensland has the potential to lift the total area planted to grain crops in Australia by as much as 50 per cent – from the 22 million hectares currently cropped to as much as 33 million hectares.
A recent discovery about the role of debranching enzymes in starches will have major implications for nutrition and human health, according to Professor Bob Gilbert, Research Professor at the University of Queensland.
From the lab to the paddock, organic grower Paul Murphy says genetic improvements have recast sorghum as a more productive and profitable option for his farm business.
A new QAAFI research project aimed at producing a preventative probiotic for cattle to mitigate poisoning from the potentially fatal pasture plant, pimelea, received funding from Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) in 2017.
Results from a QAAFI study show the bran fraction of Australia’s only white coloured sorghum hybrid, Liberty, contains a broad range of ‘healthy’ phytochemicals – raising the grain’s potential for human health food markets.
Special research measures were needed when environmental factors were discovered to trigger a prevalent but normally dormant defect in the wheat genome. When activated, the defect can cause a punishing downgrade of wheat grain quality.
