considered that research was urgently needed to improve the keeping quality of milk and butter, to seek a remedy for squirter disease of bananas, and to find ways of overcoming rots in eggs and fruits placed in cold storage to meet out-of-season demands in Australia.[120]

Other problems then regarded as important read strangely today; milk of such poor quality that it caused concern in Sydney and Melbourne and would not keep refrigerated long enough on passenger liners outward bound from Australia, and the need for fast rising doughs to overcome discontent at the long hours in the baking industry. The Council shelved the whole question of cold storage until the proper facilities for its study should become available. The Institute also was poorly funded but was able to support some investigations. More important, however, was its interaction with the Low Temperature Research Station at Cambridge, its association with surveys and reports related to the future of food research in this country, and the consolidation later of its food work with studies on meat freezing and on the refrigerated storage of fruit.

The Australian National Research Council had appointed a Meat Freezing Committee in 1921 and in 1924 studies were begun in the Biochemistry Department of the University of Melbourne under the direction of Associate Professor W. J. Young. G. A. Cook and J. R. Vickery worked on 'drip' and made considerable progress. In 1926 Vickery became one of the first batch of CSIR scholarship holders to go abroad for training. He already held an Exhibition of 1851 Scholarship and went to Cambridge to complete a Ph.D. degree. Later, as Chief of the Division of Food Research, he became an international figure in food science and technology.

Planning and negotiation for the future of food research in CSIR went on for some years. The story has been well told in the history of the Division of Food Research.[121] It is one of lack of money, perhaps wrong directions, some doubts about the best way to proceed and even uncertainty of the number one priority. There was also the absence of any available scientist of the calibre seen to be necessary for appointment as chief of a division, which is no surprise; food science qua food science was too new to have produced such men and, perhaps, too new to be fully comprehended by the CSIR leadership. In the event, Vickery returned to Australia early in March 1931 to become Officer-in-Charge of cold storage investigations. In August of that year the Section of Food preservation was officially constituted and meat and fruit work began.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering