The Canberra based members of the Food Futures Flagship team that developed plants with DHA in their seeds. From left to right, Dr Surinder Singh, Dr Xue-Rong Zhou and Dr Qing Liu.

Future grains, grain based foods and feed

The Food Futures Flagship is researching ways to develop novel, high value grains, and oilseeds, to provide substantiated health benefits to consumers.

• 2 December 2005 | Updated 8 March 2012

Overview

• Advanced genetics research
• The future of food
• Benefits for our region
• Current projects

Advanced genetics research

The Food Futures Flagship is engaged in researching new techniques in advanced genetics with the aim of delivering premium value in food and feeds.

In purely practical terms, this research theme applies advanced genetics to create differentiated grain, food and aquafeed products.

These new grain-based products will deliver:

• tangible benefits for human health
• high value foods and ingredients
• can be used as feeds across the livestock and aquaculture sectors.

The future of food

The overall scientific objective of this research is to develop novel, high value grains and resultant oilseeds that provide substantiated health benefits to consumers.

Such novel grains are more suited to the needs of the processing industry and address growing consumer demands for healthy foods and raw ingredients.

For the rural economy, they provide the opportunity for Australian farmers to move away from the intensely competitive, low price end of the grain market.

The grain modification technologies developed by the Flagship are of global, economic relevance.

They will allow Australian farmers to be among the first primary producers to capture emerging, high-value market niches.

The impact of the technology will be initially realised in developed nations. These nations typically have higher rates of lifestyle diseases such as:

• type-II diabetes
• colorectal cancer
• cardio-vascular disease.

Benefits for our region

The incidence of these diseases is increasing rapidly in developing nations. These novel grains may provide significant health benefits to these nations, while opening up further market opportunities for Australia.

The Flagship’s future grains research has three objectives. They are to:

• provide high value grains and oilseeds that can be exported from Australia, principally to South-East Asian markets
• license the technologies for grain/oilseeds production and their utilisation in other markets (for example, the USA and Europe)
• add value through the Australian food industry for both the domestic and export markets.

The research focuses on two principal areas:

• low-digestibility carbohydrates in grains for human health
• new sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

The research will deliver the following benefits:

• economic: the production of new and functional food products
• health: a reduction in pressure on health budgets through increased societal well being
• social: increased regional and rural prosperity through the revitalisation of rural communities
• processing: a greater level of value-added production to create new secondary industries and provide employment opportunities for Australians
• environmental: a reduction in the dependence on currently over-fished wild stocks, resulting in an enhanced focus on sustainable production.

Current projects

Carbohydrate research

Omega-3 oil research

Find out more about the Food Futures Flagship research.