Applied Biotechnologies Sections

Objective

To understand the plant and animal genomes central to our pastoral industries and apply this knowledge to improve the global competitiveness of our existing industries, while also developing completely new livestock-based and plant-derived products and technologies, including human health applications.

Why we are here

Livestock industries have long been a cornerstone of New Zealand’s export earnings.

Enhancing the global competitiveness of the sheep, dairy, beef and deer industries is vital to helping ensure the long-term viability of these key livestock production systems. Underpinning these industries is the efficient production and grazing of forage plants.

Plant research at Grasslands has a proud history in developing and commercialising new plant cultivars and supporting technologies (e.g. the AR1 endophyte) for both New Zealand and international markets. The Grasslanz subsidiary provides these with a clear path to market.

Genomics and reproduction technologies have brought exciting ways to decipher and manipulate livestock and forage plant genetics and biology in ways not previously possible with conventional breeding techniques. This in turn has led to a need for increasingly sophisticated and powerful bioinformatics tools to manage and mine the growing wealth of information around the plant and animal genomes.

Our scientific expertise in these areas offers opportunities to not only improve the efficiency of existing livestock production systems, but also lead to a new generation of livestock-based and plant-derived products and technologies. The large degree of commonality between livestock and human genomes also allows us to leverage off our understanding of livestock genomes to develop human biomedical solutions.

What we do

• Discover and understand genes in plants and endophytes, providing a strong base to leverage off new product opportunities.

• Apply plant functional genomics knowledge for novel developments, such as plant biomembrane technologies.

• Discover and characterise the clover and ryegrass genomes. 

• Develop improved ryegrasses, clovers and endophyte products, including plants for environmental management. 

• Identify key genes responsible for superior productivity of elite livestock, allowing breeders and industry to screen for superior animals and use them preferentially in breeding programmes and supply chains.

• Develop genomic technologies such as transgenics and cloning, offering potential for step changes in genetic improvement (as versus incremental improvements by traditional methods of animal selection and breeding).

• Determine the underlying mechanisms of muscle growth and wasting and apply this knowledge to both livestock production and human health therapies.

• Understand the biological processes controlling wool and hair growth and develop ways to exploit these.

• Apply understanding of reproduction to generate novel solutions for enhancing livestock fertility, management of wildlife pests and contraception in humans.

• Develop and manage bioinformatics tools to facilitate this research.

• Develop mathematical models to aid scientific understanding and business decision-making in complex systems within genomics, physiology, ecology, agro-ecosystems and agribusiness value chains.

• Extract, identify and characterise valuable bioactives from deer antler velvet.

Our capabilities

Functional genomics, molecular biology, metabolomics, biotechnology, transgenics, cloning, reproductive technologies, genetic mapping, germplasm libraries, bioinformatics, forages, endophytes, livestock genomes, animal science, cultivar development, quantitative genetics.