La Trobe University > Research > La Trobe Institute of Sustainable Agriculture & Food > About

About

Close up photo of wheat plant. A world leading research and training institute delivering innovative solutions for sustainable and nutritious food production in a resource and climate-constrained world.

Our work

We aim to find solutions that enable sustainable agriculture that will provide food of the quality and quantity to meet global food challenges in coming decades through a 'paddock-to-gut' holistic approach.

This goal will be realised through:

  • collective intellectual capital (technical expertise)
  • physical infrastructure
  • regional campuses
  • innovative solutions developed in partnership with the agriculture sector, industries, government and other research institutions
  • La Trobe’s Research & Innovation precinct offering unique partnering opportunities.

La Trobe's visionary investment in the $288 million world-class AgriBio building has cemented its reputation in agriculture and food biosciences, creating a platform for further investment in intellectual capital that will support LISAF. La Trobe University has made a strategic $25 million cash commitment over 5 years for LISAF to leverage further matched funding to support basic and translational research and training in the agri-food sector. Furthermore, La Trobe's $5 billion University City of the Future initiatives is ensuring further investment in unique infrastructure and capability to contribute to the whole of value chain innovation that will build critical scale to grow to ecosystem for the future of Australia's agriculture and food sector.

Our capabilities

  • World class facilities & expertise in one place
  • Transformation and Gene Editing for crop species
  • Extensive Growth Facilities (Glasshouses, CERs (PC2/QC2))
  • Mineral and chemical analyses of soil, plants, and seeds
  • Laser Capture Microdissection
  • Bioinformatics platforms
  • Sequencing Platform
  • Big Data integration and analysis
  • Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS)
  • Phenomics (2D, 3D, hyperspectral, fluorescence, RGB, cloud-based analytics)
  • Food, nutrition & dietetics lab
  • Metabolomic kitchen
  • Human clinical nutrition
  • Food/ feeding trials
  • Nutrition evaluation
  • Omics capabilities:
    • Genomics & transcriptomics
    • Glycomics(mono-/oligo-/polysaccharides)
    • Metabolomics (untargeted/targeted; including volatiles)
    • Proteomics (amino acids/peptides/proteins)
    • Single cell ‘omics-RNAseq& metabolomics