CSIRO land and water chief executive Neil McKenzie said the lab gave scientists the tools to make valuable contributions to understanding the pressing problem of land and water contamination.

Wielding his "gene shears" — or scissors as they are usually called — Dr McKenzie hacked through a double-helix ribbon at the opening.

The new lab is dedicated to researching contamination and the health of waterways and the organisms living in them.

It has enough gadgetry to excite even the most experienced scientist. "[In] the past five years . . . we've got technology for researching waterways we couldn't have dreamed of," Dr McKenzie said.

Senior research scientist Sharon Hook said the lab would look at matters such as potential contamination from coal seam gas projects, the Murray Darling Basin, salinity contamination of fresh water areas in Kakadu and the effect of pesticide run-off on the Great Barrier Reef.

"We don't just look for the presence of toxins here but also try and determine why things are toxic," she said.

Dr Hook said an exciting addition to the lab was a $50,000 piece of equipment called a "real-time system" which precisely measured the number of genes in any given sample.