Boldly going where no science show has gone before.

The Naked Scientists.

Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the naked scientists with me Chris Smith.

This week I'm naked down under quite literally and that's because I'm in Adelaide, South Australia.

Adelaide's home to some of the world's best wineries,

which I've spent a bit of time visiting, probably a bit too much actually,

to southern right whales, which I've been watching as they wallow their way along the beaches here and also to a number of

formidable academic institutes.

And this week I'm off to meet some of the researchers who are helping to put Adelaide on the

scientific map.

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Mark Tester is professor of plant sciences at the University of Adelaide's

Weight campus where he's building a new facility to root out what makes plants do what they do.

You know the advances in genomics roaring ahead.

We can sequence genomes, we can manipulate genomes,

you can do extraordinary things with molecular biology.

What's starting to fall behind in science, especially in plant science at least, is the ability

to measure the effects of those manipulations on the whole plant performance, the growth and how the

plant works when it's fully grown.

So what we need to be able to do is characterize the effects of those manipulations, the growth of the plants in

control conditions in a high throughput and efficient manner.

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