It’s been a busy few months for the Functional Grains Centre. Many of the FGC crew had the opportunity to attend the AACCi Conference in London. All those presenting did an excellent job and the team projected a very professional image of the centre during the Conference. There were many connections made and new knowledge gained. The associated trips to Oxford and Rothamstead research institute provided the students with an insight into other outstanding research centres.

We were delighted to see our first two ARC funded students walk across the graduation stage. Dr Kyah Hester and Dr Rebecca Heim both received their PhDs at the December graduations and have now moved on to exciting opportunities. We also farewelled Robert Taylor, one of our research fellows who completed his work on measuring uptake of omega-3 fatty acids from animal feed rations. Congratulations to Neeta Karve who has submitted her thesis. Neeta has secured a position in the food industry and is enjoying her new role. We have also farewelled two of our researchers, Dr Asgar Farhanaky and Dr Mahsa Majzoobi. Asgar and Mahsa have relocated to Melbourne where they are pursuing opportunities at RMIT. However, they will both remain connected to the FGC through supervision of students.

After many weeks of hard work we submitted an application to Australian Research Council (ARC) to fund a new Centre. We were pleased to welcome some new partners to this application and have managed to engage with stakeholders across the whole grain innovation chain including two international partners. Partners in our new bid include AgriFutures Australia, Australian Grain Technologies (AGT) Breeding, COFCO, CSIRO, FarmLink Research, Manildra Group, Moulamein Foods, NSW Department of Primary Industries, SunRice, The Product Makers, Voyager Craft Malt, QualySense and Tianjin University of Science and Technology.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a positive outcome.

All the best for a productive 2019!

Chris

Photo caption: Charles Sturt Vice-Chancellor Professor Andrew Vann and FGC Director Professor Chris Blanchard celebrate National Agriculture Day in 2018.