Welcome & Introduction

Welcome to the homepage of the Plant and Agricultural Biosciences Centre (PABC), which is an inter-disciplinary research centre comprising researchers, research groups, companies and institutions sharing a common interest in fostering and promoting plant and agricultural biosciences innovation.

A unifying theme of the PABC is the promotion of plant and agricultural biosciences for sustainable development to meet social and economic challenges in Ireland, the EU and internationally (including in developing countries).

The activities of the PABC are inter-connected via a number of cross-cutting themes, namely the promotion of:

Sustainability: The research and innovation activities of the PABC aim to promote or enhance sustainability (economic, social and environmental).

Diversity: The research and innovation activities of the PABC aim to promote forms and applications of diversity that can enhance human wellbeing.

Discovery: The research and innovation activities of the PABC are strongly driven by a discovery quest for new knowledge, particularly forms of knowledge that can contribute to sustainable development.

Innovation: The activities of the PABC aim to facilitate innovations in the broadest sense (i.e. that provide renewed options or approaches for problem solving), particularly the promotion of disruptive or "game-changing" innovations that can offer new opportunities for addressing emerging challenges to sustainable development.

A major aim of the PABC is to facilitate the development of a "Community of Practice" in relation to plant and agricultural biosciences where research and innovation practitioners can work together to generate novel knowledge, products and services that can facilitate sustainable development. Overall, the PABC aims to promote social, commercial and economic entrepreneurship that can contribute to human wellbeing and sustainable development.

Prof. Charles Spillane