From healthier snacks to more sustainable food production, advances in new technologies play a key role in helping improve global access to safe, secure and high-quality food.
Getting fruits and vegetables from seed to plate is an obstacle course that involves navigating climate change, pests and diseases, soil and water pollution, desertification and ultimately high-level controls to ensure food is safe for consumption and export. For all of these challenges, nuclear science offers proven, effective solutions.
Nuclear applications in agriculture rely on the use of isotopes and radiation techniques to combat pests and diseases, increase crop production, protect land and water resources, ensure food safety and authenticity, and increase livestock production.
In food science, nuclear science is at the forefront of developing healthier/lower fat foods and producing less digestible starches and oleogels, which are gels that attempt to replicate fat texture but without saturated fat.
Meet our panelists
Professor Elliot Gilbert, an instrument scientist at ANSTO. Elliot also devised, initiated and leads the Food Science project that applies materials science approaches to examine structure-property-process relationships in food-based systems.
Dr Karina Meredith, an ANSTO research scientist in the Isotopes for Water project. She is working in the fields of hydrochemistry, hydrogeology and isotope hydrology on a variety of projects located throughout Australia.
Dr Barry McGookin is the General Manager, Innovation at Food Innovation Australia (FIAL). He's spent 30 years in the food manufacturing industry and has held senior technical, innovation and commercial leadership roles in companies with key food manufacturing companies in Australia.
Dr Regine Stockmann is the Principal Research Scientist/Team Leader Food Technology at CSIRO Agriculture and Food.
