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Food Futures Institute

Our Facilities

Murdoch boasts world-class, state-of-the-art facilities on campus, as well as through partnership arrangements providing access to specialised external facilities.

 

Unique field facilities

We have large animal facilities, a veterinary hospital and associated research facilities, 2.8 ha of irrigated, netted field plots, and almost 1 ha of glasshouses in our Crop Research Hub at Murdoch’s Perth campus. We also have four research farms: the 51 ha ‘Vet Farm’ at the Perth campus, and the 40 ha ‘Mundijong Farm’, 80 ha ‘Mardella Farm’ and 203 ha ‘Whitby Falls Farm’.

In 2022, we will open the new Nambeelup regional campus with a bespoke teaching and research building, alongside an advanced food manufacturing facility to springboard our Food Science and Nutrition courses.

 

Our Technologies

Our research makes a real difference ‘in the field’, because that’s where we do most of it. We have large animal facilities, a veterinary hospital and associated research facilities, field plots, glasshouses, research farms and major technology platforms that support our research.

centre-for-crop-and-food-innovation

Agricultural Biotechnology Centre

The Agricultural Biotechnology Centre provides platform technologies and world class equipment for research and development in agricultural and veterinary biotechnology. The Centre also supports research in biosecurity, biomedical sciences and environmental biotechnology. Facilities extend across cell and molecular biology, robotics, high throughput agricultural genetic analyses and diagnostics, structural, comparative and functional genomics, proteomics and mass spectroscopy, and a full suite of bioinformatics hardware and software.

centre-for-animal-production-and-health

Grains Research Hub

Murdoch’s major grains research infrastructure includes Physical Containment Level 1 and 2 glasshouses adjacent to 2.8 ha of irrigated and netted field plots, together with storage and office facilities.

Funded through a partnership between Murdoch University, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Curtin University, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation, the Hub was established to help boost crop productivity and reduce the impact of disease, while improving crop research in Western Australia.

Researcher holding a tablet inside a polytunnel containing crops

Centre for Digital Agriculture

Western Australia’s new Centre for Digital Agriculture led by Murdoch University and Curtin University, is tasked with developing new technologies that will shape the agricultural industry of the future. With funding through the Western Australian Government’s Royalties for Regions program, researchers are collaborating on new technological advances and big data to help farmers make more informed decisions to improve sustainability and productivity and manage risks like climate change, rising energy costs and market volatility

Professor Peter Davies

Pro Vice Chancellor, Food Futures Institute

The Food Futures Institute is led by Professor Peter Davies, a renowned freshwater scientist with extensive experience in the management and rehabilitation of water ways.

Professor Davies has published widely in this area, including highly-cited papers in Nature, and developed partnerships and high-performance multidisciplinary research teams to address pressing global challenges in food, water and energy.

Professor Davies was the Program Director for Responding to Climate Change in the Worldwide Universities Network and has a strong commitment to research translation, research impact, better industry engagement and training the next generation of researchers.

Discover our stories

Researchers at the Food Futures Institute are tackling some of the world’s biggest problems relating to food production, provenance and security.