Work to begin on Teagasc’s new agriculture research centre in Wexford

Work is to commence immediately on the construction of a National Agriculture Sustainability Research and Innovation Centre (NASRIC) following the approval of €9 million in funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The new centre will expand and enhance current Teagasc research and innovation activities at its Environment Research Centre in Johnstown Castle, Co Wexford.

NASRIC will focus on the development, testing and implementation of innovative technologies to facilitate farmers to combine economic and environmental sustainability. The centre will also aim to provide practical integrated solutions for farmers and other stakeholders to improve soil health, restore and protect biodiversity, improve water quality, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and ammonia and enhance soil carbon sequestration.

“The centre will provide technical support to policymakers and the wider agri-food and land-use sectors to achieve sustainability targets,” says Teagasc director Prof Frank O’Mara. “It will accommodate up to 85 staff, consisting of research scientists, technical and support staff, to undertake the research necessary to underpin the sustainability of the sector.”

The centre will also provide technical support to policymakers and the wider agri-food and land-use sectors to achieve sustainability targets, according to Karl Richards, head of Teagasc’s environment soils and land use department. He adds that the laboratories will be equipped with cutting-edge instrumentation across the areas of soil, crop, water and gaseous emissions. The research programme will utilise a range of state-of-the-art field facilities including dairy, beef, forestry and agro-forestry research trials and component facilities including long-term soil fertility experiments, the national lysimeter platform and climate change control rooms.

Sustainability

“There has been an increasing focus on sustainability in agriculture in recent years,” says Richards. “You only have to look at the newspaper headlines over the last few years to see that. There is huge pressure on agriculture to improve its sustainability and Teagasc has been leading research and innovation in that area for many years. We are helping farmers to improve productivity and reduce their environmental impact.”

He points to the development of the Teagasc Marginal Abatement Cost Curve for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Irish agriculture as an example of this. It quantifies the abatement potential of a range of mitigation measures, as well as their associated costs and benefits. This in turn provides clarity on the extent of GHG abatement that can realistically be delivered through cost-effective agricultural mitigation measures, as well as clarity on which mitigation measures are likely to be cost prohibitive and those that should be prioritised.

“We have worked on things like protected urea, low emissions slurry spreading, liming and so on,” he adds. “All these things were led from the research centre at Johnstown Castle.

The team at Johnstown Castle is also responsible for the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory, which involves intensive monitoring of carbon emissions and removals across a range of Irish soils, putting Ireland at the forefront internationally in terms of understanding, supporting and rewarding farmers for practices that remove carbon and store it in soils.

“It is helping us to understand carbon sequestration better,” says Richards. “Soils and oceans contain the majority of carbon on the planet and help us understand better how to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Investment

“The new investment will help to increase our capacity to carry out research,” he says. “The majority of the existing centre was built in 1970. Since then we have moved from Bunsen burners to advanced molecular biology. We have had a physical infrastructure deficit which impacted what we could do here. We haven’t had enough space and our laboratory specifications were not up to standard for modern technologies. We needed a bricks and mortar investment to allow for the continued expansion of our work. And we have been expanding that work with new hires and so on.”

The investment will also lead to greater efficiency. “The lab specifications have been an issue,” he points out. “We haven’t had the air quality and temperature control and so on to house sophisticated testing equipment. We had to send samples out for analysis to Europe and the US and that was both expensive and time consuming.”

The 1,300sq m (13,993sq ft) building will help farmers and the food industry meet the sustainability challenges they are now facing, Richards concludes. “It will provide a high-quality modern lab space. The plan is move our high-quality labs into the new area while the old labs can be used for lower-quality research and office space.”