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Animal Production Sciences
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The Animal Production Sciences Platform specialises in food, nutrition and health and food animal production research. The research is conducted at six sites across Victoria including Werribee, Attwood, Rutherglen, Hamilton, Ellinbank and Kyabram. | |
The Platform comprises 60 scientific and technical staff and over 10 post-graduate students. The Platform has access to state of the art equipment and facilities and has excellent relationships with universities, medical research institutes, rural industries and food and pharmaceutical companies, both nationally and internationally.
The Platform has internationally recognised expertise in the areas of both intensive and extensive food animal production, animal welfare science, functional foods (food, nutrition and health) and biomedical sciences.
The three research programs of the Platform are:
Animal Productivity, Production Efficiency and Welfare
This program aims to improve animal productivity and production efficiency by improving lamb production, improving feed conversion efficiency, extending dairy lactation, optimising pasture and grain supplementation, and modelling production systems. Underlying this research focus is a strong commitment to develop environmentally sustainable livestock production systems including alternative animal production systems and reducing greenhouse gases.
This program also incorporates a strong focus on animal welfare issues by developing scientifically proven standards of animal welfare, demonstrating the relationships between the human-animal interaction, animal welfare and productivity and playing a key role in industry and public education on animal welfare.
The extensive animal production research is conducted in regional locations in Victoria that allows a better understanding of different environmental conditions on animal production. Wool and lamb production research is conducted at Rutherglen and Hamilton whilst dairy research occurs at Ellinbank and Kyabram. Intensive livestock production research is conducted at Werribee and Attwood. Animal welfare research and development occurs predominantly through the Animal Welfare Science Centre; this internationally recognised centre is a joint venture between DPI Victoria, the University of Melbourne and Monash University.
Food Quality
This program focuses on food quality from functionality to product integrity, food safety and compliance to food standards. The key focus is on dairy and meat products and generating new technologies that enables the Victorian meat industry to enhance its global competitiveness and respond to changes in consumer preferences expected in the next 10 years.
Food, Nutrition and Health
This program focuses on developing nutritionally enhanced products, gene matched food products and discovery of novel bioactive food constituents. A key component of this program is to develop differentiated food products through nutritional manipulation of farm animals.
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