The Seafood CRC has supported the development of seafood post harvest research capacity in SARDI, CESSH, QDAFF, UTas, Uni SA and USC. This capacity will be a key part of the Program 2 CRC legacy. At the end of 2012 PM2 organsied for a meeting of researchers from CESSH, SARDI and QDAFF to explore opportunities for collaboration in developing legacy projects. At that meeting it was clear that there was not enough interaction between the three centers and that they were largely unaware of each others capabilities, industry linkages and facility capacity. It was also obvious that there were opportunities for learning from each other that were not being capitalised upon. It was agreed to hold meetings every 2 months at each of the organisations and to invite other organisations to participate (UTas, USC, Uni SA). All participants would fund their own attendance costs and where possible would send 2 people.

A second meeting was held in February 2013 at QDAFF. At that meeting PM 3 attended together with Fuller Communications and work has commenced on creating a capabilities document. There was also some discussion about how best to communicate and extend research results to industry end users. The role of the CRC's SeaFOOD magazine was brought up in that context and it was agreed that the Hub would provide input to the planning of each issue and actively engage in identifying and preparing stories for it. Participants at that meeting included several researchers who were not at the first meeting. Again the participants found the meeting valuable and a third meeting is sheduled for 27/3/2013 at SARDI.

There is an opportunity to grow and expand this hub to include more researchers. This will provide opportunities for
a) better collaboration between researchers
b) improved research responses to industry needs
c) further development of the researcher capabilities
d) coordinating communication and extension of results.

There is also potential for engaging with non CRC researchers and for facilitating international collaboration and engagement. As the next bid is primarily focused on post harvest research there is a need to provide support to this group of researchers and expand the membership of the hub.