New Zealand
June 15, 2010
Creating sweet ‘fatty’ grass to increase livestock productivity, using ‘good’ bacteria to stretch the shelf-life of meat and sending in wasps to control a $1 billion weevil problem are just three ongoing research projects highlighted in the new AgResearch publication, Science Review 2010.
With the tag line ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants…’ and a photograph from 1923 of scientists at the Ruakura Animal Research station in Hamilton (the forerunner of today’s AgResearch) the Science Review highlights some of the many successful scientific endeavours that have taken decades of research effort, thought and discovery.
“Some of the research contained in the Science Review has literally taken generations,” says AgResearch Chief Executive, Dr Andrew West.
“Productivity gains in agriculture, or reductions in its environmental footprint come from small and steady increments of progress. This means chipping away year on year using ever new technologies that compound to create the gains that help underpin New Zealand’s prosperity.
The Science Review, the initiative of AgResearch Chief Scientist Dr Stephen Goldson, gives the progress of eight key research journeys and in some cases follows younger scientists and research developing alongside each other. "AgResearch scientists and people we have worked with have made huge strides in various areas of important research. Much of our work cannot be captured in the occasional media story which often looks at the most recent development. This Science Review fills in the longer story but shows the breadth of achievement from the starting points to today and tells how important and effective science has been in developing pastoral agriculture and the New Zealand economy," says Dr Goldson.
“Issues such as pest incursions, pastoral land use intensification and the spectre of climate change will never be resolved by short-term project based research but we can make a difference with long-term, determined and well-directed research and development,” says Dr Goldson.
The Science Review highlights the work being done to improve productivity along the whole value chains of dairy, meat and wool. It also shows how productivity gains are protected through improved plant and animal genetics, reduced gut parasite burdens and new ways of protecting water through agro-ecosystems.
The Science Review also focuses on other key threads of scientific work including:
- freshwater management on farms – this has reduced pollution in Lake Taupo
- the development of GM forages – high-sugar, high-lipid grasses help speed up livestock growth
- management of drench resistance to nematode parasites in sheep – AgResearch leads the world in evidence-based research on the best ways to manage this $700 million worm problem
- the importance of DNA sequencing to genetic gain in sheep and beef cattle – this work has seen the weight of sheep meat per ewe wintered increase by 72 percent since the late 1990s
- ways to prepare better cuts of beef and lamb red meat – oxygen impermeable film and carbon dioxide saturation packaging has doubled the shelf-life of chilled meat and bio-preservation using bacteria will extend it even further.
Dr West says: “The work to produce the Science Review began because in the routine and necessary production of newsletters and media releases it was challenging to highlight the essential, long-term nature of our research.”
http://www.agresearch.co.nz/publications/sciencereview/sciencereport2010/default.htm
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