Agri-Food Systems Research Facilities
Queen's University Belfast
Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) Laboratory Capabilities
Advanced Mass Spectrometry (ASSET Lab)
Category 2 and 3 labs (e.g. aerobic and anaerobic microbiology, parasitology)
Core Technology Units
Advanced Informatics
Genomics (e.g. sequencers most illumine platforms and more recently a PacBio)
Data
Global Innovation Institute (GII)
Clinical Research
Wellcome Trust-Wolfson Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility (NICRF)
Centre for Public Health - routine clinical chemistry, human studies etc.
AFBI
Livestock Production Research Platform - AFBI Hillsborough
300ha farm with a livestock holding of:
- 280 dairy cows + young stock
- 300 ewes & finishing lambs
- 140 sows
- 110 suckler cows + 400 finishing beef
Equipment:
- Rumination halters for 80 animals
- Lying time sensors for 300 animals
- Indoor position/behaviour monitoring system
- Individual electronic intake systems – birth to adulthood across all the species (1000 animals)
- Camera systems for all species to monitor behaviour
- In-field concentrate feed and water intake recording stations
- Thermal, heart rate, DEXA, Skin temperature technologies.
- Two large scale and 6 small scale state of the art metabolic chambers
Precision Grassland Research Platform
- 78ha of “connected landscape” (Sensors and technology connecting: Soil, Plant, Animal and Climate)
Veterinary Sciences Division - Stormont
- ACDP/SAPO CL2 and CL3 laboratory facilities inc ELISA, PCR, flow cytometry, sequencing
- ACDP CL2 postmortem facilities including MSc inside room
- Designated facilities/animal research facilities
- New main building housing most laboratories of Disease Surveillance & Investigation, Chemical & Immunodiagnostic Sciences and Virology
Biocontainment Facilities
Containment Level 1, 2 and 3 laboratories for the safe containment and analysis of microorganisms of animal health and public health significance.
Food Quality & Safety
Accredited analytical chemistry laboratories - Analytical chemistry units are UKAS accredited laboratories (no. 2632) covering a wide range of screening and confirmatory analysis.
Accredited microbiology laboratories - Food Microbiology Unit is accredited under ISO/IEC 17025:2017 to perform a wide range of tests.
Biocontainment facilities - Containment Level 1, 2 and 3 laboratories for the safe containment and analysis of microorganisms of animal health and public health significance.
High pressure processing - A 35l capacity commercial high pressure food processing facility.
Instrumental analysis of food quality
Sensory analysis and research - certified under ISO9001.
Specialist chemical analyses - mass spectrometry based methods to analyse the chemical composition of low and high molecular weight compounds in complex sample matrices.