The key project benefit realised by these works was the provision of a range of facilities to enable the distinguished Professor James Dale’s team of scientists to research genetically modified bananas. Key to the professor’s research was the development of a food source with greatly increased levels of β-carotene, which the human body converts to vitamin A. The research enabled by this laboratory has the potential to ease the suffering of millions of people in Africa and Asia for whom vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness or death.