Researchers have hailed The Plant Accelerator as one of the world's most sophisticated plant research facilities which could combat drought and salinity problems.

It could be worth billions of dollars to Australian farmers by improving crop yields.

The accelerator was officially unveiled at The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility at the University of Adelaide's Waite campus on Thursday.

The facility's director, Mark Tester, said the accelerator was "the biggest facility of its type in the world".

"It's the best in the world for ability to measure plants and how plants grow," Prof Tester said.

"It can do things which have never been possible before."

The accelerator is a series of 50 high-tech greenhouses and laboratories which deliver state of the art imaging of plants.

Prof Tester said the imaging will allow continual measurement of the physical attributes, or phenotypes, of up to 160,000 plants a year.

The changes will then be tracked and differences studied to identify genes responsible for traits such as drought and salinity tolerance.

"It will help the Australian farming industry by giving us the chance to discover genes, discover variety of plants, which are better able to maintain growth in the face of those tough conditions that Australian farmers have to cope with," Prof Tester said.

"It's infinitely quicker ... realistically what we are aiming for is to deliver plant science discoveries more rapidly, and we are saying two years faster than is currently possible.

"It's very advanced piece of science and technology coming together."

An improvement of five per cent in yields for Australian farmers could be worth $200m a year, he said.

"In dollar values, it's very hard because we are moving into unknown territory," he said.

"But we are genuinely hoping to be able to contribute perhaps five per cent more to Australian yields in drought tolerance and maybe more than that.

"We are talking about delivery over the first five to 10 years ... I think it's contributions could be worth billions of dollars."