About Us

This is the first time three large Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) and a major university have put together a large multi-disciplinary team for the benefit of New Zealand health and the New Zealand food industry.

• We initiated in 2004 as a collaboration between The University of Auckland, AgResearch Limited, HortResearch and Crop & Food Research; In December 2008, HortResearch and Crop and Food Research research merged to form Plant and Food Research.
• We have a governance structure;
• We have established strategic and science plans, with a research proposal of four objectives concentrating initially on gut health.
• We have a Business Development Committee who guides us in developing commercial products.

Our Science

We undertake multidisciplinary collaborative research with the aim of developing gene specific foods targeted to preventing, ameliorating, curing diseases.  Our initial target is Crohn's disease. One of our focuses is publishing in the peer reviewed scientific literature.

Our Publications

Our Objectives

The major aim of this Centre is to determine how foods and food components affect health at the molecular genetic level by using nutritional genomic methods.

These include gene expression (microarrays), genotyping in humans (eg SNPs), metabolomics, epigenetics and proteomics. Chemists extract and fractionate food for biological analysis. This detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms will ultimately lead to the development of completely new, added-value, export-focused, gene-specific foods that will deliver proven health outcomes to consumers.

New Zealand food industry collaborators will deliver these foods to national and export markets.

Our Focus

Our initial focus is gut health. The four organisations that are working together in Nutrigenomics all have expertise in food, food components and gut health.

An initial target is Crohn’s disease. See http://www.ccsg.org.nz.

Crohn’s disease (CD) mainly affects affluent developed countries, with approximately 500,000 sufferers in the US and a similar number in Europe. The incidence rate is increasing.

Importantly, a recent New Zealand survey showed that a large percentage of CD patients utilise complementary or alternative therapies, with 72% finding dietary adjustment to be useful.

Our Achievements

• Establishment of a National Centre of Excellence in Nutrigenomics.
• Development of a close relationship between the three organisations to build up synergies and interactions by:
  • Developing our current world leading bioinformatics capability in AgResearch, Plant and Food Research and The University of Auckland to create an integrated genomics and food database and associated database tools incorporating the exciting food database capability in Plant and Food Research;
  • Developing our strong biomedical clinical linkages through Professor Fraser, Dr Stuart Ryan and the CCSG for research in Crohn's disease and then to increasing our expertise in general gut health;
  • Exploiting our existing food collaborations, especially through the CRIs, which cover all aspects of the primary food production sectors from fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood and dairy products.