Contracting Organisation: University of Canterbury
Science Leader(s): Heather Hendrickson, Peter Fineran
Funding (GST excl): $8,946,240
Funding Year: 2023
Contract Start Date: 1 October 2023
Term: 5 years
Public Statement
Our primary industries face numerous pathogens, with a dwindling supply of sustainable solutions for protecting food production. Our programme will create safe and environmentally friendly biocontrols to combat bacterial pathogens in Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad. We are building on our expertise to generate a robust pipeline for the discovery and development of non-GM phage-based biocontrols against any bacterial pathogen. Our program will exploit data-intensive analysis of phage-bacterial interactions, employ smart cocktail design and evolutionary methods to create phage biocontrols that target the appropriate pathogens and mitigate phage resistance.
Our interdisciplinary team includes a broad range of research experience and Māori leaders who will work together to establish a phage biocontrol pipeline for commercialisation and manufacture in Aotearoa New Zealand. We will target 4 important pathogens with different challenges and at different research and development stages to ensure the creation of robust and generalisable phage-based solutions. Our initial products will economically benefit the kiwifruit and apiculture sectors, which were significantly impacted by bacterial pathogens. Further pipeline optimisation involves research on phage biocontrols for cherry and salmon industries.
Our programme will create a new phage manufacturing bioindustry in Aotearoa New Zealand with highly-skilled jobs and will improve our food sectors’ productivity. Longer term, our platform will be ideally positioned to pivot towards emerging threats to food production, and even medically-relevant human pathogens.
We will work closely with stakeholder and advisory committees, while conducting outreach and market acceptance work to ensure impactful outcomes. This programme will generate a knowledge-intensive sector, provide environmental and sustainability benefits, reduce toxic agrichemicals, improve user safety and brand identity, and enhance market access in environmentally-conscious global markets.
* For more information, please refer to the MBIE website.
