Central Glasshouse Services Manager’s Report 2020

Welcome to the Central Glasshouse Services  (CGS) annual newsletter. 2020 was another eventful year with a range of upgrades and a high volume of research at the Facility including 85 new users and over 4000m² of plant growth space utilised.

In 2020, the CGS team continued to provide services and assistance to Schools and the broader UQ community with media and consumables delivered to labs around campus. Throughout the year we supported over 1000 research experiments across four Schools, four Institutes, and four Centres as well as three external clients.

Plant Growth Facility

As Open Day was cancelled, we grew plants to provide a food source for the predatory insects and mites which we introduced into the glasshouses. This project was a great success and lowered the pesticide applications within the CGS facilities.

We are still working closely with Bec Archer from SAFS Glasshouses, Gatton Campus on this project. The research has maintained a constant flow due to the lower teaching requirements of our researchers.

Upgrades to the Facility included the acquisition of four new 300L pasteurising/sterilising trailers which can fit into the glasshouses, increasing our efficiency of media service delivery and capacity. We have purchased a new electric vehicle with a higher load capacity and improved safety with a full cabin, tail gate lifter and reversing camera.

We took delivery of our new 1200L Steridium stainless steel growth cabinet with adjustable LED lights in white, red and blue. The cabinet was locally manufactured at Brendale and features retractable tarps over the growing media storage bins to keep out debris and minimise contamination of growing media.

Thank you

This year CGS have seen many changes, starting the year with COVID-19 restrictions. As of 21 April 2020, Jack Hall joined our team as our new Technical Officer to help with the workload and to increase the diversity within the teams’ skills and capabilities. Jack has been a great addition to the team with his knowledge of beneficial arthropods, to use in our IPM trials.

The end of 2020 also saw the departure of Clint Chapman. We would like to thank Clint for the help and support over the past nine years. Clint left the position of Senior Manager, Research Facilities and Infrastructure Services in the Faculty of Science on 6 December 2020. Over the last nine years we have seen many changes and improvements facilitated through Clint’s support and mentoring, including improved client service relationships with Property and Facilities. Property and Facilities have a better understanding of our needs and as a result of better communication and monthly meetings looking more proactively at infrastructure replacement and maintenance. For this to work Clint had us look at how we could be better clients as well as service providers.

We would also like to thank Professor Bronwyn Harch,  DVCR and the Faculty of Science for the subsidies they have provided to help minimise research costs. In what was a challenging year for all, their support was invaluable to our facilities.

Finally, we would like to thank you, our clients for the support you have provided as we finish one year and start the next. We value your input and encourage you to provide feedback and ideas via our anonymous feedback survey.

All of us at CGS are expecting another exciting and productive year through the many planned changes with the work around the new Central Research Platform. We look forward to seeing you in 2021.

Ken Hayes

Manager, Central Glasshouse Services