Four grants have been awarded under the New Zealand – China Food Safety & Security Roadmap to further develop scientific collaborations with China.

These include two travel grants and two workshop grants, and are expected to grow durable scientific collaborations between New Zealand and China, focused on the areas of food safety and security.

The Roadmap Advisory Committee has allocated $5,000 travel grants to Garry Hill and Yinqiu Wu from Plant & Food Research; and $20,000 workshop grants to Associate Professor Ravi Gooneratne’s team from Lincoln University and Associate Professor Yacine Hemar from the University of Auckland.

The five-year Roadmap operates under the framework of the China – New Zealand Strategic Research Alliance (SRA) established in 2010, and aims to create research opportunities, conduct research and deploy science outcomes into the marketplace. The Roadmap identified three areas of priority areas of cooperation – Food Safety and Security; Water Research; and Non-communicable Diseases. Plant & Food Research was chosen as the coordinating organisation for work in the Food Safety and Security priority area, and manages the grants on behalf of MBIE and their International Relationships Fund.

Source: www.plantandfood.co.nz