None
Tuesday, 20 January 2009

A series of innovative projects and initiatives have placed the Institute of Agriculture (IOA), The University of Western Australia (UWA), at the forefront of national and international agricultural education and research.

IOA Director, Professor Kadambot Siddique, said plant based food, fibre and industrial raw materials were essential for human survival against the backdrop of escalating input costs and climate change.

Recognising this has led to the development, earlier this year, of  the International Centre for Plant Breeding, Education and Research (ICPBER) at UWA within the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Professor Siddique said the Centre addressed the emerging global need for training first class scientists in genetics, biotechnology and plant breeding.

"We are directly addressing the deteriorating supply and demand balance for major staple food crops, while being aware that the loss of training capacity for plant breeding, at a time of increasing demand for plant breeders, is a threat to world food security.

"By offering undergraduate and postgraduate programs and the use of first class facilities, the IOA is proactively addressing these issues."

Professor Siddique said part of the impetus for ICPBER was existing IOA international collaborative projects with countries such as Iraq, Oman and East Timor and organisations such as ICARDA in Syria and ICRISAT in India.

"We also recently commenced a collaborative project with Lanzhou University in west China to investigate sustainability of agricultural systems on the Loess Plateau," he said.

Another initiative that will showcase IOA research talent is the drive by UWA within four years to secure a place in the world's top 100 universities, as defined by China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings. UWA is currently ranked 127 in the world.

Addressing an audience of 30, mostly agricultural scientists, at the Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture (CLIMA), part of the IOA, Professor Alistar Robertson, UWA's Pro Vice Chancellor of Research Initiatives, recently outlined a strategy to achieve this.

"UWA's research on ‘Plants, Animals, Agriculture and Environment', one of the three main strategic research output areas for UWA, will be greatly enhanced by the recent organisational initiatives in the IOA and with a focus on high quality, high impact research in agriculture and other strategic outcome areas, UWA can achieve its target of  top 100.

"In addition, UWA will foster better internal linkages on our Crawley campus with the Australian Research Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, the new ICPBER and the Cooperative Research Centre for Future Farm Industries to achieve better research outputs," he said.

Professor Robertson said indicators for the Shanghai Jiao Tong university rankings included the number of Nobel Prize winners, the number of highly cited researchers, the number of papers published in premier journals, such as ‘Science' and ‘Nature' and the total number of citations by an institution's researchers.

Media references

Authorised by ‘Institute of Agriculture – UWA’ and issued on its behalf by
Brendon Cant & Associates, Tel 08 9384 1122

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Professor Kadambot Siddique, Tel 08 6488 7012, Mobile 0411 155 396

Tags

Channels
Teaching and Learning
Groups
UWA Institute of Agriculture