Lincoln University funded Research Programmes

Environmental changes pose significant threats to New Zealand’s primary production, generating a critical need for innovative, effective solutions to maintain production in the face of increasing drought, temperature and pathogen/pest attack. Our research programme will pioneer a new class of environmentally friendly plant

protectant, naturally occurring fungal volatile organic compounds (FVOC). We will demonstrate that application of our FVOC products will reduce the negative impacts of climate change induced stress on plant production as well as increasing the plant’s ability to tolerate attack from disease-causing microbes. The costs of recent drought events and reductions in pasture persistence to New Zealand’s primary industry were ~$2 billion for the dairy, sheep and beef sectors.

We will use the latest scientific research tools to help us understand FVOC-plant interactions, particularly molecular level changes which may be heritable, and thus transferable through generations via seed. This research will be conducted by a team at Lincoln University in conjunction with domestic (AgResearch, Scion, Otago, Massey and Canterbury Universities) and international (Singapore, Mexico, Austria, USA) research partners.

We aim to deliver non-toxic, environmentally-safe alternatives to existing and phased-out agricultural chemicals. This will help future-proof Aotearoa's agricultural, horticultural and forestry production in the face of emerging climate change stressors.