Prof Peter Høj, currently director of the Australian Wine Research Institute, has been appointed the new CEO of the Australian Research Council (ARC).

From wine to wheat to mouse plagues, Australian life scientists are nothing if not creative in agricultural biotech, writes Graeme O'Neill.

Start-ups are the easy bit -- it's the quality and consistency of post-natal care that determines whether young biotechnology companies will survive, according to Dr Jurgen Michaelis, the man behind the rapid rise of South Australia's biotechnology industry.

On a wall at CSIRO Plant Industry's Merbein laboratories, is an old photo-micrograph of a grapevine floral bud. Dr Nigel Steele Scott, head of Plant Industry's horticultural research laboratories in Glen Osmond, South Australia, says it's his favourite image -- a portent of a revolution in viticulture that is still having an enormous impact on the Australian wine industry today.