Research hotel for plant life

In what has been called the first publicly funded and accessible facility of its kind in the world, the Canberra node of the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility has been officially launched by the Federal Minister for Science, Senator Kim Carr.

The centre, co-located at CSIRO's Black Mountain site and the Australian National University, has been described as a "research hotel", where plant biologists can house their projects without having to meet substantial up-front costs or pay high overheads.

The facility, which is being renovated now, should be open for research early next year. It will host the first international plant phenomics conference in April 2009.

The High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre will provide controlled environments for growing plants across a range of climatic conditions, glasshouse automation technologies, digital imaging technologies and an integrated system for the rapid capture of genetic resource information.

Its sister facility, the Plant Accelerator at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus, was officially launched on Monday. It will feature a series of 50 high-tech glasshouses and laboratories that will house over 1km of conveyor systems to deliver plants automatically to imaging, robotic and computing equipment.

It will allow continuous measurements of the phenotype of up to 160,000 plants a year.