Prenatal science to profit farm lab

AgResearch has formed a potentially multimillion-dollar alliance with Auckland's Liggins Institute, founded by the Herald's New Zealander of the Year, Dr Peter Gluckman.

The state-owned pastoral research institute wants to capitalise on the Liggins Institute's world-leading expertise on prenatal and early childhood development in humans to produce healthier lambs, calves and other animals.

AgResearch chief executive Dr Andy West said the collaboration could eventually be comparable to a similar joint centre for reproductive sciences and mammalian genomics being formed with Otago University.

He has earmarked $8 million for AgResearch's part of that project at its Invermay campus near Dunedin, and said a similar investment near the Liggins building in Grafton was possible.

"If the thing with Liggins really builds the way we'd like it to, perhaps we'd look at a significant investment there as well," he said.

"Putting money into a building probably isn't a radical suggestion at all. We are building additional facilities around the country because we are growing."

AgResearch researchers are working on animal nutrition and muscle development at Ruakura, near Hamilton, and other sites.

West said no thought had yet been given to moving them, but the institute already had five staff working at Auckland University on animal genetics and proteins.

"The prospect of having staff up there is appealing and exciting."

Gluckman said much of the Liggins Institute's knowledge of human growth and development had been gained through experiments on sheep, cows, goats and deer.

"If you look at the pastoral agriculture industry, it's all about growth and development too - what makes animals grow faster, produce more milk, change the distribution of fat in milk. Rather than AgResearch duplicating our knowledge, they should work with us," he said.

"We are taking a proposal to the Government and the university for a really major development so that New Zealand remains the leader in understanding how the early environment in life affects how the body works from the points of view of agricultural production and human development."