Research themes
Specialised food industry clusters
Realising the unique potential of agrifood regions through:
- Collaborative planning tools and processes that link local growers, food manufacturers, government and service providers in building shared strategies for sustainable development and investment attraction
- Data integration, mapping and analytics to reveal boundary conditions and opportunities
- Design solutions for master-planned agrifood industrial precincts integrating renewable water, energy and waste technology
- Innovation in freight and logistics to enable shorter, streamlined supply chains with higher security and quality control
- Identifying optimal regional crops and value-adding opportunities
- Alignment with education and training to build future-ready skills and high-value jobs
- Distinctive regional brands and synergies with complementary industry, such as the tourism, health and manufacturing sectors.
High-tech controlled environment production
Increasing resilience and profitability through:
- Teaming engineers and plant scientists to reimagine production systems
- Application of advanced automation, control and sensing technologies to optimise the productivity of labour, energy, water and other inputs
- Precinct-based solutions that enable 24/7 production of safe, nutritionally optimised fresh food close to urban demand centres and export hubs
- Agile technology for farming within multipurpose buildings
- New downstream manufacturing partnerships, including systems for growing highly specialised inputs for precision nutrition goods
Building scale in future food segments
Increasing the value-adding capability of the Australian food sector through:
- Optimising quality and nutritional outcomes for plant and animal products through innovation in QA and production protocols
- Provenance protection from producer to consumer
- Building partnerships with growers to enable consistent supply of specialised inputs
- Formulation and production protocols for customised goods in high-value segments
- Innovation in the design and verification of functional foods and clinical precision nutrition products.
- Design solutions for future food factories, applying circular economy principles
- Whole-of-supply chain approaches to customisation and demand-driven production including consideration of consumer preferences, trade, compliance and quarantine issues in target export markets.