The other friends of Waite
A great strength of the University of Adelaide’s Waite campus is the like-minded organisations who’ve chosen to nest amid the gumtrees with us – some of whom have been our neighbours and collaborators for generations.
Institute for Wine Research ‘Needed’ was the headline in the Saturday Advertiser on 15 November 1952.
While the Waite Agricultural Research Institute and the CSIRO were pushing out some useful research on soil types, diseases and pests, Director of the Waite Institute at that time, Professor James A. Prescott, was adamant that a new dedicated institute was needed for the Australian wine industry to succeed.
He was not alone in this view. Growers and winemakers backed this call, which they believed would help the industry to become as good as any in the world. They even put money on it. Based at the Waite campus, the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) was founded in 1955 with funding support from grape growers and wineries around the country.
Its first chief scientist, ex-Roseworthy lecturer in Oenology, John Fornachon, shared the industry’s passion to produce world-class traditional fortified wines, but also to build an Australian table wine industry that could compete internationally. Along with colleague Bryce Rankine AM, they built the research profile of the new Institute so that it would meet and respond to the needs of producers.
With a research interest in wine spoilage, Fornachon said his early research career at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute afforded him only the most basic facilities: “an incubator, microscope, a few reagents and glassware, some bench space, and not much else”. But a few years on, under his leadership, the new Institute would deliver game-changing research for the industry. This included understanding oxidation, hazes and deposits caused by trace amounts of iron and copper, the need for and development of better yeast strains, better use of sulfur dioxide, and pH control, as well as research into new grape varieties.
After more than 20 years with the AWRI, Rankine returned to teaching. He led oenology and viticulture education at Roseworthy from 1978, becoming one of Australia’s longest-serving wine researchers and educators. He authored and co-authored several books over his career, but the title still found in many a winemaker’s bookcase could well be the motto of the AWRI: Making Good Wine.
Today, the AWRI employs more than 130 staff supporting the industry through responsive innovative research and the development of a range of information and education tools for growers and winemakers.
Established in 1992 as the research arm of the then Department of Agriculture (now Primary Industries and Regions – PIRSA), the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) brought together researchers with deep connections to primary producers on land and sea. Through its network of research stations, field sites and laboratories embedded in regional and rural communities across the state, SARDI has provided applied and innovative research outcomes in response to the experiences and challenges faced by South Australian primary producers.
While the move to form a single government research arm for agriculture, fisheries and ultimately natural resources would take some adjustment, by 1995 various SARDI research teams were relocated to Waite, sharing knowledge and resources and building important research collaborations.
The nature of its research is to tackle threats to primary production and enhance the development of new production opportunities. Its Waite campus facilities include the SARDI Plant Research Centre (PRC), which functions as a hub for a state-wide network of cutting-edge laboratories, research centres and field sites.
The PRC facilities encompass 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’s broad range of research specialties encompass four key areas – aquatic sciences, crop sciences, food sciences, and livestock sciences – supporting the state’s leading primary industries and agribusinesses.
Established by the Australian Government in 1927, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (later to become CSIRO Division of Soils) had at its heart an extremely practical imperative.
Veterans of WWI, having been granted land in the Murray Valley, were battling significant soil deterioration. Irrigated farmlands, suffering both waterlogging and rising salinity, were becoming increasingly unproductive, and the Division of Soils was tasked to fix it.
From that first mission in and around Renmark, CSIRO researchers were set to play a vital role in improving our understanding of the chemical and physical composition of Australian soils – some of the most ancient and stable landscapes on the planet.
In its origin story, there could be no closer relationship than the one between the original CSIR soils research group and the University of Adelaide’s Waite Agricultural Research Institute (WARI). Its first committee chair was James A. Prescott, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry at WARI, who oversaw the recruitment of talented soil scientists that developed their research to a level acknowledged internationally for its excellence. Publications from researchers such as Clarence Sherwood Piper became definitive soil chemistry texts globally.
While the research ranged from applied to theoretical, the work was always purposeful. Surveying virgin lands and agricultural areas, the team tackled everything from soil erosion and, with the outbreak of WWII, testing soils for the construction of airfields and the design of soil-cement paving.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the Division had specialisations in soil chemistry, minerology, physics, mechanics, and microbiology, and had established regional centres across the nation. But by the 1990s, changes to funding models, research goals and structures saw the Division transform again.
Heavily engaged in cooperative research with the University, the Department of Primary Industries and Regions, and the South Australian Research and Development Institute among other collaborators, CSIRO became a proud partner in the Waite precinct, where it continues to contribute to improved practices and outcomes in agriculture, land and water use and mineral resources management through its research.
Written by Michèle Nardelli
Photography by Jack Fenby