Galaxy Australia’s 14 millionth job was a win for sustainable crop production

The 14 millionth data analysis job was recently submitted to the Galaxy Australia platform, marking another major milestone for this national service. University of Queensland Senior Research Fellow, Dr Donald Gardiner, uses the platform to understand how pathogens cause disease in plants. His work highlights how essential access to the right research infrastructure is in sustaining Australia’s agricultural and biodiverse future.

How does Galaxy Australia support sustainable agriculture?

As part of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, Donald works in a diverse group that includes molecular biologists, plant pathologists and biotechnologists to solve plant disease problems. Their work has been central to the ARC Hub for Sustainable Crop Protection, looking at innovative ways to protect Australian agriculture.

Dr Donald Gardiner

Donald’s work using Galaxy Australia spans several research projects, focusing on pathogens threatening the nursery and garden, forestry, agriculture and horticulture industries, as well as natural ecosystems. He is investigating the impact of Myrtle rust on the Mytaceae family of plants, including eucalypts and tea tree. The threat that pathogen Fusarium oxysporum poses to Australia’s banana industry, and risks to ginger and cereal crops are all better understood by Donald’s use of Galaxy Australia’s tools for genome assembly, annotation, RNA-seq and phylogenomics analysis.

How do molecular biologists use Galaxy Australia for bioinformatics?

For researchers like Donald whose lab work is complemented by key steps involving bioinformatics, the platform serves as a ‘truly enabling’ resource.

‘Galaxy allows me to skip much of the backend set up work for getting pieces of software to run. As someone who is not solely undertaking bioinformatic work, the need to have relatively simple ways to run programs is really important as I can’t dedicate massive amounts of time to bioinformatics.’

The service provides a comprehensive suite of software tools that are ready to use, allowing life science researchers to focus on the biological impact of their work rather than how to perform the analysis themselves, or relying on external bioinformatics expertise.

Find out more about Dr Donald Gardiner’s research

Learn about the different types of research that Galaxy Australia gets used for: No code, no problem - data analysis for biologists with Galaxy Australia (webinar)