SARDI: from applied research to best practice in South Australia

Since its establishment in 1992, SARDI has pursued world-leading research and development solutions for primary producers in South Australia and beyond.

SARDI delivers the applied science that grows South Australia’s primary industries, playing a key role in advancing the productivity, quality, competitiveness and long-term sustainability of the state’s agricultural sector.

That’s a bold ambition. South Australia has over 522,000 square kilometres of land in use for agriculture and the prolific waters off its coast host extensive commercial fishing and aquaculture industries. Add the state’s substantial food and wine sectors, and the breadth of SARDI’s remit can start to feel dizzying. It is a multidisciplinary agency in the truest sense.

The mainstay of SARDI’s activities is applied scientific research, which focuses on addressing the real-world challenges faced by primary producers now and into the future.

In practice, this includes everything from identifying and managing emerging environmental threats – weeds, pests, bacteria and pathogens of concern – to helping individual sectors and producers operate more efficiently, more cost-effectively, and more sustainably.

SARDI is headquartered within the University of Adelaide’s Waite Campus – a forward-looking agri-science precinct that has developed in Adelaide’s leafy inner-south.

The organisation’s broad-ranging research specialties are divided into four main categories: aquatic sciences, crop sciences, food sciences, and livestock sciences. Each involves the kind of hands-on, experiment-based research that attracts curious and innovative scientists to SARDI – and which often leads to significant discoveries. The Waite Campus facilities include the SARDI Plant Research Centre (PRC), which functions as a hub for SARDI’s state-wide network of cutting-edge laboratories, research centres and field sites.

There is ample opportunity for trial-and-error science at the PRC. Its ultra-modern facilities include 30 controlled-environment rooms in which light levels, temperatures, and other variables can be manipulated as needed; next-generation greenhouses that can maintain a wide range of natural environments; and bespoke laboratories where researchers apply molecular diagnostics to entomology, plant pathology and soil health tests plus other trials and diagnostic services.

SARDI is also a genuinely state-wide organisation, administering a network of regional research centres that tend to reflect the industries that operate around them.

Just north of Adelaide, at the University of Adelaide’s Roseworthy Campus and at the Turretfield Research Centre, SARDI researchers explore innovations in broadacre agriculture, advanced animal reproductive technologies, natural resource management, pastures research, and animal production. Their projects are supported by an operating piggery and a 900-hectare working farm, where lab theory can be tested in practice.

Other regional research centres are located at Struan and Kybybolite Research Farms in the state’s southeast, Loxton in the Riverland, and Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley. There are also research facilities at Clare in the Mid North, as well as at Port Lincoln and Minnipa on the Eyre Peninsula.

These centres conduct ongoing research into pasture, livestock, viticulture, horticulture, agronomy, tillage, and low rain fall cropping techniques.

SARDI’s research is not limited to dry land, either. The Institute is also heavily involved in supporting sustainable fisheries and a thriving aquaculture industry for the state.

The South Australian Aquatic Sciences Centre at Adelaide’s West Beach is a striking, purpose-built marine and freshwater research centre. The facilities include a pool farm, an indoor aquaria room, shellfish and finfish hatcheries, and an algal production and analysis facility – as well as the nation’s only large-scale biosecure aquaculture system for investigating marine pathogens.

Working here and in regional marine research offices at Port Lincoln and Mount Gambier in the state’s southeast, SARDI staff work to ensure the sustainable development of South Australia’s fisheries and aquaculture industries, and the long-term health of Australia’s southern waters.

SARDI also manages a sophisticated oceanic monitoring system that covers the Great Australian Bight, the Southern Shelves and the Spencer and St Vincent Gulfs. The network continually tracks water temperature, salinity levels, wave heights, extreme weather events, algal blooms, the trajectories of potentially devastating seaborne viruses and more.

This generates a wealth of immensely valuable data for the communities, commercial operators and recreational users of South Australia’s extensive coastline and waters, which SARDI gathers and shares online daily.

That reflects an organisation-wide commitment to not only conduct cutting-edge applied research, but to disseminate the results as widely and consistently as possible.

The development of South Australia’s vibrant innovation culture has been an unambiguously positive story and SARDI is an integral part of the state’s growing reputation as a global knowledge hub.

The SARDI model – in which applied research, enabled by government funding, is directed strategically at specific industry problems and policy priorities – creates real value for South Australian primary producers.

SARDI has delivered numerous outstanding outcomes including underpinning the development of the Australian oat industry by breeding specialised new varieties, delivering science to support the development of the state’s valuable Southern Blue Fin Tuna aquaculture sector, improving pest and disease management in crops, and improving lamb survival rates for graziers.

Other gains aren’t as easy to quantify. For example, SARDI has mapped improved routes for Southern Ocean trawlers that are saving the fleet thousands of dollars in fuel costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions both on the water and along the fuel supply chain.

The Institute’s whole-of-state benefits also extend to extensive scholarship and postgraduate placement programs, which provide viable pathways for young South Australians who want to pursue careers in primary industries science and research in South Australia.

SARDI’s various programs help prevent a “brain drain” by attracting and retaining this homegrown talent where it will benefit and advance the state’s best interests.

This underscores the fact that SARDI is not just an important asset for today. Its researchers are already investing considerable effort into future food and water security, sustainability, climate challenges, changing soil constraints and emerging biosecurity threats.

Australia’s primary producers will need innovative solutions to meet these many challenges. SARDI’s proven commitment to delivering them is an argument for optimism.