From the CEO
COVID-19 is highlighting the need for greater security and efficiency in food supply chains. Nutrition, provenance and safety are at premium. Rising demand in segments such as alternative proteins and trusted fresh food is creating new opportunities for partners. At the same time, the Commonwealth’s Regional Deal program is recognising the potential of regional centres as food manufacturing clusters and the need for more supportive strategy and infrastructure staging. CRC initiatives covered in this enewsletter include a mapping and analytics project for Western Sydney to help chart future industry growth; a study laying the groundwork for a specialised food-industry cluster in the Coffs region; an engineering and plant science collaboration aimed at optimising nutritional quality in blueberries by controlling light spectra; and a major Northern Australian project around commercialising native rice. Finally, a shout-out for our Industry PhD Scholarship Program. We are seeking talented candidates across our programs, including students from STEM fields who may not have considered the future food industry and related technology as a career path.
David Eyre
CEO, Future Food Systems
NFF launches Get Australia Growing plan
In her role as President of the National Farmers' Federation, CRC Chair Fiona Simson addressed the National Press Club on 14 July to launch the NFF’s Get Australia Growing plan. The plan calls for greater investment in our regions, including a revival of manufacturing, increased digital connectivity, more jobs and less bureaucratic complexity.
“The resilience and self-sufficiency of the agrifood sector hinges on taking a whole-of-system approach – suppliers of inputs, freight providers, growers and processors must all work together with government to chart the way forward,” Simson said. "There is great potential for smart regional specialisation and a dynamic future for the Australian agrifood industry, based on value-adding."
For more information on NFF’s Get Australia Growing plan,
click here.
Controlling indoor crops via wireless IoT
Our ‘IoT for indoor cropping’ project, a cross-disciplinary collaboration involving engineers from UNSW and plant scientists from WSU, exemplifies how our university partners are working around COVID-19 restrictions.
Remote sensing technology is now installed and live in the WSU’s experimental greenhouse facility. The project aims to develop a cost-effective IoT system to monitor and control conditions in indoor cropping environs using innovative sensing and network technology.
Read more
Producing potent blueberries in polytunnels
WSU and NSW DPI scientists will use mild salinity stress and novel light-enhancing LLEAF tech in a bid to optimise key nutritional qualities in blueberries grown undercover, paving the way to premium export markets.
Read more
Data-mapping Western Sydney
Researchers at UNSW's state-of-the-art City Analytics lab are using advanced mapping and analysis to create multi-layered maps of the agrifood ecosystem in Western Sydney, contributing to the evidence base for a specialised food-industry cluster in the region.
Read more
Analysing Coffs' food value chain
Coffs Harbour City Council is working with QUT researchers to construct a detailed picture of the region’s food supply and prospects for its growth. Their findings will underpin the development of a specialised food-industry cluster for the Coffs region.
Read more
Commercialising native rice
CDU and QUT researchers have joined forces with NT DPIR, industry and Indigenous enterprises in a four-year, multi-disciplinary project that will ‘prepare the ground’ for commercialising Australian native rice, creating new opportunities for Indigenous enterprise.
Read more
InProfile
Meet Sami Kara: manufacturing expert
For Professor Sami Kara, Scientia Education Fellow and Director of Vertically Integrated Projects in UNSW's Faculty of Engineering, sustainable manufacturing is a key to future prosperity and a cleaner, greener planet. 3D printing is pretty exciting, too.
Read more
Education program
The Future Food Systems Industrial PhD Scholarship Program has kicked off with four talented students joining CRC projects around Australia and new opportunities announced.
The program puts talented students at the heart of a unique research ecosystem, building new ideas to solve real-world industry problems as Australia builds scale in the booming global markets for specialised food and nutraceutical goods.
PhD candidate Gareema Pandey joins the ‘Optimising blueberry fruit nutritional quality using controlled spectra and mild stress treatment via polytunnel innovation’ project team under the supervision of WSU’s Prof. Priti Krishna.
Tim Spooner is undertaking his doctoral thesis as part of the project team for the ‘System design and configuration for Sprout Stack production system’ project under UNSW’s Prof. Sami Kara.
Partner news
In recent weeks, several of our participants have put runs on the board.
Australian National Phenome Centre working to combat world’s costliest diseases
Breakthrough ‘nutritional fingerprinting’ research by a global team has far-reaching potential to prevent lifestyle-related disease.
Read more
Providence Asset Group backs UNSW scientists in developing breakthrough H2 tech
If novel technology developed at UNSW’s Hydrogen Energy Research Centre can make a fast lab-to-market transition, low-cost hydrogen storage could be a clean, green reality by 2021.
Read more
Decontaminating produce with supercharged air
Replacing chemical washing: NSW DPI and Hort Innovation have found a post-harvest decontamination method that’s fast, safe and inexpensive.
Read more
Food in the Capital web series
With its conference postponed till mid-November, Regional Development Australia ACT is keeping us in the ‘sustainable city’ loop with this series, running July-September. First up: CEO Michael Claessens.
Read more
Newsbytes
National Food Traceability Program rolls out
Rolling out from this month, the new National Food Traceability Program aims to bring end-to-end transparency to our food supply chains, boosting capability across the sector.
Read more
AI teams outperform traditional growers in WUR's Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge
Wageningen University and Research’s second Challenge yielded powerful insights and ‘globally applicable’ algorithms. The AI teams beat the human team, too.
Read more
New on the menu: plant-based, 3D-printed steak
Redefine Meat launched its world-first sustainable, plant-based, 3D-printed ‘alt-steak’ in June and plans to market-test it at high-end restaurants from late 2020.
Read more
Events
Unlocking Innovation webinar series
FoodNavigator’s global series covers health and nutrition, sustainability, supply chains, new product development and more.
Read more
How does COVID-19 accelerate change in food systems?
A thought-provoking and timely Greentech webinar with three advanced protected-cropping company CEOs.
Read more
Virtual fireside chat: byFlow's Nina Hoff
Forward Fooding chats with the CEO and co-founder of 3D food-printing firm byFlow.
Read more
