Contact Us
The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility (APPF) is strategically located at three renowned plant research organisations in Australia, enabling us to benefit from a world class concentration of expertise in plant and soil science. You will find our facilities at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, and the Australian National University and CSIRO Agriculture and Food in Canberra.
APPF Central
With an eye for strategy, business opportunities and organisational culture, Susie loves keeping busy, and is the glue that sticks the three nodes of the APPF together. Spare time is strictly for her accordion playing!
Fit, fast and fun, Helli keeps a close eye on business planning, performance monitoring and general operations. If she is not playing beach handball you are likely to find her at Pilates.
Passionate about data and how it help us build a better world, Donald wants to contribute to the sustainable agriculture of the future – and make room for the insects that occupy his free time.
Belinda is a science communicator and educator, facilitator and MC with experience in a host of technical, corporate and not-for-profit organisations.
APPF Central location
The Plant Accelerator® (Building WT40)
University of Adelaide
Waite Campus
Hartley Grove, Urrbrae
SA 5064 Australia
Phone: + 61 8 8313 0159
Email: appf@plantphenomics.org.au
Adelaide
The Plant Accelerator® at the University of Adelaide
A central component of The Plant Accelerator® (TPA) is the first automated high-throughput phenotyping system in Australia, which remains unique in both scale and open-access policy, attracting researchers from Australia and overseas. The system boasts a range of imaging technologies (RGB, infrared, fluorescence and hyperspectral imaging) to facilitate innovative high-quality research into plant performance in different environments. Watch more here.
Researchers from the public and private sector benefit from the expertise in design, management, operation and analysis of large scale phenotyping experiments offered by TPA, which has resulted in many high-impact publications. The facility’s phenotyping capacity has expanded in recent years to incorporate DroughtSpotter platforms to support precision heat and drought screenings and field phenotyping services, offered in partnership with the Unmanned Research Aircraft Facility (URAF) at the University of Adelaide. Plans to offer aerial phenotyping via Airborne Research Australia (ARA) and ground-based phenotyping are being developed with input from potential users to align with grant applications.
TPA is located at the University of Adelaide’s renowned Waite Research Precinct, the largest agricultural research, education and commercialisation precinct in the Southern Hemisphere. Established in 1924, ‘The Waite’ is a co-located partnership of 15 complementary organisations and centres engaged in world-class research and development in plant science, agriculture, food, wine and natural resources.
The Plant Accelerator®
Building WT40
University of Adelaide
Waite Campus
Hartley Grove, Urrbrae
SA 5064 Australia
Phone: +61 8 8313 6432
Email: info@plantaccelerator.org.au
Our Adelaide team
A farmer’s daughter and one-time agronomist, making a difference for farmers is a matter close to Kerry’s heart. She keeps us running in ship-shape order, taking care of operations, finance and reporting.
Multi-screen, multi-gaming, multi-tech, up-all-nighter, George takes care of our data management, from storage to tools for database queries and sharing, and everything in between.
With a head for numbers and an encyclopedic memory for facts, Nathaniel will help you obtain the data and graphs you need to interpret your research results.
You’ll need some serious imaging equipment to capture this tennis ace. Guntur keeps a watchful eye on our phenotyping systems and analyses the images collected.
M +61 (0)432 297 838
Sweet as a rose, there is nothing plant whisperer Lidia can’t grow. She keeps a watchful eye over the plants in our greenhouses and provides support and wisdom to the humans growing them.
M +61 (0)421 803 735
As sharp on the court (as Guntur well knows) as she is with a needle, Nicky will be there to provide support in the greenhouses throughout your experiment.
Our princess of bling, Fiona brings her own form of sunshine to the greenhouses as she checks on plants and provides a helping hand to the experiments.
Canberra (CSIRO)
The High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre (HRPPC) at CSIRO
The HRPPC combines expertise in plant science and engineering to develop and build (i) cutting-edge phenotyping technologies to support medium throughput phenotyping of model and potted plants in controlled environments, and (ii) novel plant phenotyping solutions to support research experiments at large scale and high throughput in the field. Field applications include ground and aerial platforms with a capacity of over 250,000 plots p.a. and the first high-resolution plant phenotyping capability for glasshouse/field environments – the Cropatron.
The strong mechatronics and software engineering capability at the HRPPC is driving R&D of cutting edge phenomics technologies that benefit a range of new industries, e.g. pharmaceutics. The centre focuses on supporting and refining existing platforms, for example integrating advanced sensor technologies to measure new traits in new crops and to keep pace with the demand for deeper insight into plant behaviour and function, an innovation to increase capabilities. Our engineers have developed phenoSMART®, a science gateway that provides a national data service for on-demand phenotyping analysis.
High Resolution Plant
Phenomics Centre
CSIRO Agriculture and Food
Clunies Ross Street, Canberra
ACT 2601 Australia
Phone: + 61 2 6246 4339
Fax: + 61 2 6246 4975
Email: Marni.tebbutt@csiro.au
Our Canberra (CSIRO) team
Tennis and horse riding, singing and wine sipping… somehow Marni tears herself away from this fabulous lifestyle to manage business development, operations and reporting for our office.
Handy with his hands, if it needs building or fixing, Jamie is your man. When not tooled up, Jamie is busy overseeing logistics and technical services for our field phenotyping projects.
Quick with a big smile, global traveller and keen cyclist, Wayne oversees logistics and supports users of our controlled environment services.
When Geoff can tear himself away from the crisp white ski slopes of a mountain he works on software development for computer vision related tasks.
Cars have more than just good looks in Sakda’s opinion; he loves their ‘brains’. Sakda has a fascination for ECU remapping, PCB design and micro-controller programming. Smarts that come in handy when implementing and troubleshooting software for us.
Our resident ‘zen-gineer’, Michael ensures the smooth running of our field equipment and loves designing and constructing innovative hardware prototypes of the future.
For Michael, there’s nothing like a high intensity futsal match to wrap a busy day masterminding low cost enabling technologies, delving into sensor networks and the seeking solutions in IoT research.
Canberra (ANU)
The Plant Phenomics Group at ANU
Our node at the Australian National University (ANU), the Plant Phenomics Group, has unique expertise in phenomics, bioinformatics, hardware and software development and data visualisation. This provides essential research support to APPF customers, linking phenomics data to underlying genomic variation. The node offers modern PC2 facilities and provides the only quarantine certified plant growth facilities in the ACT region. With a strong history of supporting ground-breaking plant research, including the development of open source, high throughput phenomics infrastructure and visualisation tools, the node creates open data sets for plant science researchers nationally and internationally.
Strategically placed in the Plant Science Division at the ANU, the node benefits directly from the diverse expertise locally available as well as supporting research and technology development at the Research School of Biology. This includes two Centres of Excellence (CoE): the ARC CoE in Plant Energy Biology (PEB) and the ARC CoE for Translational Photosynthesis (TP). Additional collaborations are in place with the ANU-CSIRO Centre for Biodiversity Analysis, the CoE for Robotic Vision and the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which offers high-performance supercomputing, cloud and data repository.
Plant Phenomics Group
Australian National University
Bldg 134, RSBS, Acton
ACT 0200 Australia
Phone: + 61 2 6125 3741
Email: appf@anu.edu.au
Our Canberra (ANU) team
Someone who can certainly ‘see the forest for the trees’ is Tim. His love of forests and the cutting edge technology that allows us to ‘virtually’ see them from the sky down to the molecule, knows no bounds. When not attached to a VR headset, Tim focuses on our technological development and research collaborations.
When not rocking out with her synths or curating her culinary garden collection, Ellen is knee deep in data, from maintaining sensors to database design and exploration of new cutting-edge data technology.
Pieter is a multi-tasking PhD student with a big agricultural and root background. Taking care of plants and the growth facilities is considered as a relaxing time. When not studying, teaching, or nurturing plants, he loves to fill his time with family, friends, books and running.
Ming supports our team providing technical support, 3D modelling and scanning, VR, AR and general statistical support using R.
Penny manages our growth cabinet facility, supporting users with advice, planning and compliance. When she isn’t nurturing plants in our facility you’ll find her enjoying the great outdoors.
Delving into the underground, Manny is a visiting plant scientist who studies roots and their peculiar habits. Away from the lab he keeps out of trouble by running and pointing a telescope at the cosmos.
Imelda supports our team by taking care of the upkeep and maintenance of our controlled environment growth chambers.