Endeavour Fund: Successful 2023 Research Programmes

Crops grown on arable land are an abundant resource and already provide most of the calories in people’s diets. Consumers are increasingly looking to these plants to do much more – to meet a wider range of culinary and nutritional needs, and to help address global concerns around sustainable ecosystems and animal welfare.

Food manufacturers have been quick to respond with many novel products. However, these are often highly refined and stripped of their whole-food benefits, have poor taste and texture, carry high sodium content, and can have hidden damage to essential amino acids. The next generation of plant-based foods will need to be prepared more sensibly with gentler handling of the inherently healthy raw materials and better guardianship of environmental impact.

New Zealand can participate in this opportunity by developing the science and technologies to produce unique highly functional plant foods. Our research programme will design models of crop fractionation processes that incorporate eco-sensitivity, value chain dynamics and circular bioeconomy, while maximising ingredient techno-functionality and health benefits. We will test at pilot scale how a new industry could operate by using exemplar crops known to grow well locally, like green peas, oats and hemp.

We have gathered some of the brightest minds in process engineering, food science, sustainability evaluation, economic analysis and human nutrition. The team also includes many industry partners, from plant breeders, growers and processors to ingredient-users and food manufacturers.

Our aim is to support the arable crop processors of Aotearoa. We want to inspire entrepreneurs in the emerging proteins sector to become successful international suppliers of high-value plant-based food ingredients. In this way our land-based industries can continue to transition towards a profitable low-emissions future.

About half of Aotearoa's greenhouse gas emissions occur in cities and towns where people live and work. We will produce the highly detailed information on Aotearoa's urban greenhouse gas emissions that is needed to allow central and local government, iwi, urban planners, traffic planners and industry to better monitor their current emission sources, enable targeted mitigation strategies, and change policy to support low-emissions outcomes.

Urban planning and development choices can dramatically change emissions from transportation, built infrastructure, and the ability of the urban ecology to absorb carbon. We will develop granular emissions information going back in time, that allows us to provide the first real world assessment of how different development choices change emissions in the Aotearoa urban environment. Initial data shows that land carbon exchange – release of carbon through respiration and removal of carbon through photosynthesis – can offset a significant fraction of emissions in Aotearoa's cities. We will determine how much carbon is taken up by Aotearoa's urban environments, and how development styles and management of urban parklands can enhance or reduce this carbon uptake.

We will produce emission maps of both fossil fuel derived carbon dioxide emissions and the land carbon exchange for all of Aotearoa's cities and towns using a consistent and robust approach, underpinned by real-world atmospheric greenhouse gas measurements and modelling. Data will be viewable through a verifiable national emissions dashboard. Together this proposal will identify and address the opportunities in our urban environments to achieve Aotearoa's commitment to reach carbon net-zero.

Landslides of all types and sizes occur across Aotearoa. As we’ve seen in Cyclone Gabrielle, they can have a devasting impact, resulting in loss of life, damaged and destroyed homes, and disrupting and isolating communities long after the rain has stopped. To plan for, invest smartly, and reduce our risk from landslides we need to know where and when they will occur, how big they might be, what or who they will impact and what the consequence of that impact is likely to be. In short, we need national maps of landslide hazard and risk that can be used for short-term emergency management and long-term planning. We currently do not have this evidence base. This project aims to create, for the first-time, national scale models that characterise and quantify the risk from earthquake- and rainfall-induced landslides.

We know that the ocean surface is becoming more acidic because of atmospheric CO2 emissions. However, there is currently little awareness of the impact of atmospheric CO2 on freshwater. We suggest that freshwater is not only acidifying faster than the oceans, but is being ecologically restructured by CO2 increases. Through this programme, we will be the first globally to develop a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of increased atmospheric CO2 on freshwater ecosystems.

The Waikato River system will be our exemplar, in which we investigate the effects of atmospheric CO2 on algae, on kākahi (a keystone species and mahinga kai for Māori), on nutrient availability, and via nutrient-changes on the development of harmful algal blooms. We will deploy new methods to monitor water quality, and construct a process-based model validated through intensive monitoring of the river. Using data from international climate forecasts and our process-based ecosystem model, we will predict future algal growth responses and the likely effectiveness of interventions to maintain freshwater quality, in the face of increasing atmospheric CO2. We will work with Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Maniapoto, and Ngāti Tahu – Ngāti Whaoa, as kaitiaki of the Waikato River, to understand the impact of our scientific findings on management plans for the Waikato, and extend our knowledge to freshwater systems Aotearoa-NZ-wide.

Our team combines leading researchers with a wide range of skills from Lincoln Agritech Ltd, Cawthron Institute, Universities of Lincoln, Otago, Victoria, Waikato, Griffith, La Trobe, Tübingen, Uppsala, and Waikato Regional Council. Our relationship-based approach will support implementation of our findings by kaitiaki, including Iwi, Regional Councils and industry responsible for provision of water, to ensure New Zealanders can drink, swim in, and gather food from our freshwater.

Our food production and consumption must achieve sustainability for our environment and people. It is imperative that equitable and resilient food systems are developed to reduce Aotearoa-NZ’s vulnerability to changing environmental, economic, and social pressures, while enhancing the wellbeing of people (tangata ora) and the environment (taiao ora). To ensure that the Aotearoa-NZ food system delivers nourishment to all our communities, enhances the wellbeing of Te Taiao, and supports economic prosperity, a computational model of our food system will be developed by the Sustainable Nutrition Initiative^® of the Riddet Institute, hosted at Massey University, in co-leadership with Wakatū Incorporation who represent the hapū land owners in Whakatū, Motueka and Mōhua rohe. The model will help transition our food sector to a carbon-neutral economy, underpinned by field trials and data collection in Te Tauihu.

The ability to simulate national and regional outcomes from changes in agricultural practises will enable climate and trade resilience to be built into decision-making alongside economic consequences. This system-unified approach is not currently possible. Understanding the current characteristics of our food system, including new data generation applied to advanced modelling, will enable prediction and assessment of the impacts of future change and aid food sector enterprises in planning and implementing production transitions.

The programme will support hapū-led research including assessment of the food system in Te Tauihu; developing a pathway towards a knowledge-intensive regenerative and resilient food system; and testing the scalability of current, new, and indigenous crops and species through a tikanga-led, customary approach which supports the momentum towards climate positive food production systems. The programme will inform evidence-based decisions leading to sustainable change to the Aotearoa-NZ food system that supports a resilient food sector and enhances tangata ora and taiao ora nationally and regionally.

Pumice, a vesicular volcanic rock with unique properties, is found in large quantities in the central North Island, particularly in forestry lands owned by iwi settlement trusts. Although Māori used pumice traditionally for a wide range of applications (e.g., fishing, containers, and ornaments), and pumice is used for a range of applications overseas (e.g., construction, insulation, cosmetics, polishing), today there are relatively few pumice operations in Aotearoa-NZ. Working with governance entities and iwi/hapū/whānau of Te Arawa Waka, this research programme seeks to kick-start a new pumice economy, driven by Māori, and fulfilling aspirations around intergenerational wellbeing, kaitiakitanga and leadership in a low-carbon future.

The research will determine how new types of concrete can be produced using Aotearoa-NZ pumice as a cement replacement. This is globally important, given that cement is a major source of carbon emissions and concrete consumption is increasing. The programme will also ascertain the extent to which Aotearoa-NZ pumice exhibits properties needed for other new and exciting applications, e.g., architectural paints, filtration, mesoporous technologies. By matching knowledge of required properties with their availability, and applying a range of geological and analytical techniques, a detailed inventory and characterisation of the resource will be established.

Many researchers in the programme are Māori and several whakapapa to Te Arawa waka. To ensure that the future pumice economy is developed appropriately, balances risks and can meet iwi landowner/investor aspirations, the programme interweaves mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) with state-of-the-art tools and approaches from other science disciplines.

The vision is for this programme to be a catalyst for historic pumice mātauranga to be reinvigorated and reinterpreted, with the emergence of new cultural products, as well as products/applications that are widely beneficial across Aotearoa-NZ. 

Led by Professor Fiona Alpass (Massey University) and Dr Brendan Stevenson (Allen & Clarke Ltd), the team also includes pre-eminent national (Universities of Waikato and Auckland, Victoria University, Te Pūkenga and Te Whare Wānanga O Awanuiārangi) and international researchers (Australia, Japan, Wales, Canada, England, Scotland, USA, and The Netherlands). Building on over 2 decades of ageing research, including information about lifecourse events predicting frailty or thriving in older age, and public health data, the team will pioneer the use of innovative ‘big data’ and modelling techniques in ageing research. The results will highlight preventable factors leading to frailty in older age, including the Māori, Pasifika, and Chinese populations that make up much of NZ’s multicultural society. Findings will provide specific targets for changes in social policy and practice to prevent experiences such as loneliness, dementia, and falls in the community, and highlight the different lifecourse pathways to frailty or thriving. In addition to informing NZ policy through the extensive involvement of end-users, findings will have a global impact by contributing to international policy that supports older people to thrive.

In New Zealand, and globally, there is a gap in biosecurity defences. This gap allows aerial invaders-invasive pests (insects and pathogens) to reach New Zealand via the wind-assisted pathway; they can spread within New Zealand via this pathway, irrespective of their arrival mode. There are no effective tools to manage this pathway of pest movement, leaving a hole in our biosecurity net. This hole will widen as climate change brings extreme weather events able to transport aerial invaders to our shores, and as the habitat ranges of these invaders expand - both in their source regions and in New Zealand.

It is time to tighten our biosecurity net and close the aerial invader hole.

Our diverse science team will develop a novel, integrated Aerobiological Surveillance and Prediction System (ASaP) to close the aerial invader hole in our biosecurity net. ASaP integrates internationally new science on:

• long-distance atmospheric dispersion modelling
• atmospheric boundary-layer dynamics
• rainfall washout/survival by flying insects.

We also extend existing knowledge on pathogen atmospheric-transit survival, and include innovative aerial invader surveillance by our Māori Partners Taranaki Mounga on the Taranaki coast.

Our science was co-developed with our Programme Advisory Committee, representing the entire biosecurity chain. ASaP will be used by MPI to optimise existing biosecurity systems aligning to Pre-border, Border and Post-Border surveillance and risk analysis biosecurity activities.

Over the past decade, NZ has battled multiple aerial invaders, which are now established pests (for example, myrtle rust, fall armyworm) and there are more on our doorstep, circulating in Australia/Asia-Pacific. Preventing establishment of just 1 serious pest would recover programme costs 10 to 100 times (NZ$0.125B to 1.25B) through avoided losses in the forestry and/or horticultural sectors, maintenance of carbon sequestration, and through biodiversity conservation.

Healthy freshwater is vital to New Zealanders. It is critical that we care for and manage it to maximise cultural, environmental, social, and economic outcomes.

Our lakes are in crisis due to climate change and anthropogenic pressures, including nutrient and sediment run off, invasive species, and water level fluctuations; approximately 45% have a water quality index of ‘poor’ or worse. These stressors are degrading lakes so that many no longer meet ecological, cultural, or societal needs and values, e.g., a source of food/mahinga kai, a taonga species habitat, or a recreational asset to enjoy.

Currently, communities, iwi and managers cannot effectively measure holistic lake ecosystem health, prioritise stressors to target for mitigation, or design future management plans accounting for climate change. Additionally, most lake restoration activities are not meeting expectations.

Our research combines biophysical science with te ao Māori and social science to develop a globally unique suite of tools to measure impacts, identify effective restoration methods, and assess long-term sustainability. This is achieved by developing and implementing a holistic lake health assessment tool and delivering a new approach for assessing lake health degradation risk. This will allow managers to prioritise their actions to meet future needs. We also design, test, and implement a new integrated decision-making framework to guide restoration at lake, regional and national scales, providing a transparent, rigorous, and defensible approach to guide effective use of resources.

The programme has been co-developed with Māori, primary industry, and freshwater management agencies, enabling rapid implementation of our tools and policy uptake of our new approaches. This research will dramatically impact lake ecosystem health and the cultural and economic wellbeing of people and communities around these waterbodies.

Climate change is increasingly impacting food production systems and industry needs to better prepare for future climate challenges. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ocean ecosystems and farmed finfish are already impacted by warming sea temperatures, as demonstrated by the recent salmon mortalities in the Marlborough Sounds. To enable the finfish aquaculture sector to thrive and adapt to this uncertainty, we will create future adaptive breeding strategies that shift from a short-term productivity focus to incorporate resilience breeding in a new dynamic future context. With that knowledge we will develop new adaptation plans that incorporate climate-change forecasting and identify strategies to respond to emerging threats.

This new approach will enable breeding programmes co-designed with industry and iwi to adjust as future environmental conditions emerge. This will help established (salmon) and emerging taonga species (tāmure/snapper and haku/kingfish) thrive and provide industry and iwi with options through species diversification. Using multiple molecular tools (e.g., DNA sequencing and gene expression analysis) we will identify genes of importance for resilience and will deliver accelerated and increased genetic gain. With our Māori partners we will develop best-practice to ensure these technologies are applied appropriately within a Te Ao Māori context.

Our research meets an urgent need by accurately identifying resilient finfish that will be bred to improve survival, welfare and performance in multiple environments, protecting and adding value to a growing industry into the future. Our research will make sure the right species and genotypes are farmed in the right locations as climate futures emerge. Our adaptation and resilience breeding tools will be applicable beyond aquaculture, locally and globally, including other primary producers, stock managers and conservationists, enabling development and proactive tuning of climate change adaptation responses.

Ngā Ngaru Wakapuke, gifted by Te Ātiawa, represents the waves created by movement of the landscape beneath Raukawakawa Moana (Cook Strait), that creates impact on people (tāngata) and land (whenua). The Transition Zone (TZ) spans the lower North and upper South Island, and is home to our largest sources of earthquake risk, including the Alpine Fault and Hikurangi Subduction Zone. Currently, we know very little about how these major fault systems interact. There is a 75% probability of a major (>M8) earthquake on the plate boundary in the next 50 years. This could potentially trigger a cluster of major earthquakes over years or decades, causing on-going disruption to communities.

Working in collaboration with communities and iwi, we co-design scenario narratives that create a shared vision of transition through on-going seismicity. We develop a risk-informed evidence base, starting with an advanced understanding of the 3-D sub-surface architecture of the Transition Zone, to understand how faults interact. We couple this with evidence of past earthquakes, revealed through analysing lake sediment records that paint a picture of earthquake activity thousands of years in the past. Together, these data validate computer simulations of earthquake processes that will dramatically improve our ability to forecast future earthquake sequences.

These hazard forecasts will inform assessments of how risk and socio-economic consequences evolve through time. Our research supports national-and regional resilience preparations, including stress-testing potential infrastructure investments, to help infrastructure providers develop business cases that will lead communities towards a more resilient future. Our research also contributes to national and regional level emergency management planning, enhancing our capacity to respond and recover, and enabling communities to improve their awareness and preparedness. Building resilience to future earthquake sequences.

We will develop high-value products derived from grape marc, to grow existing New Zealand industries and facilitate new ventures. Currently treated as waste, grape marc is a significant resource.

Our research team holds several patents and has developed leading-edge technological approaches that will be applied to grape marc components.

The NZ food industry will use grape proteins and bioactive polyphenols will as dietary ingredients in their own right, while antioxidant biopolymers will extend the shelf-life of food. We will create value out of fine chemical and surfactants based on grape marc components. We will introduce novel high value paper products with key industry partners, providing fire-retardant and antimicrobial properties and integrated paper-based electronics.

We will take a stakeholder (industry, consumers, community) co-creation approach in the design of novel products for applications in the food, pharmaceutical, building and fine chemicals sectors.

Our team from Auckland University of Technology, Scion, the University of Canterbury and the University of Auckland will work closely with the NZ wine industry for the supply of grape marc and support NZ companies to develop high-value products.

Our programme will be an example of how to create substantial new high-value product revenue streams for NZ companies while eliminating a primary industry waste stream as part of our future circular economy.

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.

New Zealand’s wine industry/viticulture sector is 1 of our most important and valuable horticulture industries, adding nearly NZ$2.4B, NZ$2B being exports, per year to our GDP.

Correct forecasting grape yield is a key issue for the sector and inaccurate techniques used today can be costly and destroy grower/winery profits.

To solve this problem, we will develop a novel approach combining a cutting-edge imaging-based detection system with a physiological growth prediction model. This is a highly complex interlinked and challenging measurement and data problem and has not been approached in the way we propose.

Encouraged by our recent results and progress we will combine:

• a system for 3D image capture
• a novel 3-dimensional imaging reconstruction technique
• a world first integrated “digital grapevine twin” mode based on a functional-structural whole-plant models.

We assembled a strong multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research team, including Vision Mātauranga experts, covering all technical aspects our research. Our research team will be supported by an industry advisory board composed of key NZ stakeholders in robotics/data analytics and viticulture.

Our systems will provide multiple immediate and ultimate benefits across different sectors, including:

• increased average yield and improved operational and financial planning for wineries/vineyards
• revenue and export opportunities for NZ Agritech high-value-manufacturing and ICT companies,
• accelerated vineyard automation which will help to mitigate labour shortages and cost
• better preparation of vineyards for climate change.

Our programme will solve an expensive and important problem for the viticulture sector and create new revenue and export opportunities for New Zealand high-value manufacturing companies. We envisage that solving occlusion issues will serve as a template for future research and become a cornerstone for more extensively automating our future agriculture high-tech sector.

As 1 of only 12 space-faring nations, NZ is uniquely placed to leverage its domestic launch services to develop a world-leading space ecosystem. Hundreds of biological experiments are conducted on the International Space Station (ISS) each year, with studies ranging from human physiology and molecular biology, to microbiology and plant biology. These discoveries have translated directly into clinical biomedical applications, new drug development, and sustainable solutions for primary industries. Microgravity protein crystallisation is an increasingly valuable tool for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, with the majority of crystals grown in microgravity exhibiting superior quality over control experiments conducted on Earth. Despite the significant value microgravity experimentation can provide to the global USD 1.1B protein crystallisation industry, executing microgravity crystallisation is currently orders of magnitude more challenging than analogous experiments on Earth, with costs and extended experimentation timelines cited as leading reasons for preventing most potential clients from utilising microgravity.

To address these challenges, we will build upon our successful protein crystallisation prototype development develop fully-automated, high-throughput crystallisation facilities. Our partnership with leading commercial microgravity platform developer Axiom Space will ensure regular, frequent, and cost-effective missions to both the ISS in the near term and the first commercial space station from 2025 to enable efficient, streamlined services to pharmaceutical and academic/government research customers. Our programme will validate the designs of our hardware and software systems, provide critical flight heritage for our commercial modules, and lay the groundwork for implementation of long-term commercial platforms on Axiom Station. We will use the technology, partnerships, and processes developed in this programme to establish a competitive commercial microgravity research industry in New Zealand at the interface between the trillion-dollar global pharmaceutical and aerospace sectors.

Tourism is in the midst of a global crisis. While tourists, tourism operators, and destination managers are negotiating the immediate effects of a global pandemic, it is also timely to address the serious systemic issues that were confronting the industry before the current crisis arose and create a new model with a focus on low carbon travel, ecosystem restoration, and community participation, with mana whenua exercising their role as kaitiaki at the forefront.

This 5-year research program will create a technology-supported ‘new tourism’ model and radically transform the sector to address Aotearoa’s need for a more sustainable tourism industry. He karapitipitinga mariko - Immersive regenerative tourism experiences in Aotearoa, uses Virtual and Mixed Reality technologies to enable tourism without travel, enhancing local-based tourism, reducing carbon emissions from international travel, open up environmentally sensitive areas in a safe manner, and allowing tangata whenua to be in control of how their knowledge is shared. We will allow tourism businesses to offer both virtual (that do not require tourists to travel physically at all) and augmented physical (on site) visitor experiences independently or simultaneously, enabling tourists to explore Aotearoa in ways currently not possible. It will also generate unique insights into virtual tourism, supporting tourism providers to better understand the implications of this approach.

In an interdisciplinary project bringing together academic leaders from tourism, indigenous knowledge, and technologists and in partnership with the tourism industry and local communities, we will innovate the sector and build a tourism future that is economically more productive and resilient to crises, while enhancing tourism’s social, cultural and environmental sustainability, and creating memories that last long after the physical experience of the destination has ended.

Professor John Reynolds at the University of Otago is leading an international team of world class scientists to develop a new wearable technology to change the way neurological disorders like Parkinson’s Disease and brain cancers are treated.

Their revolutionary approach is a “wearable hat” that generates beams of sound and light energy beyond the range of human perception, focused on specific regions deep in the brain. The focused beams cause specially developed drug carriers administered in the blood stream to release their medical payloads at precise locations when and where they are required. The hat will be operated on demand and can be used on the move and away from the hospital or clinic. This will be especially useful for remote communities and for in-home treatment with whānau and family.

The precise targeting and timing of drugs to specific parts of the brain means for Parkinson’s Disease better life-changing outcomes for patients, with reduced side-effects, vastly improving existing treatments which are imprecise, wear off over time, and can be surgically invasive. Targeting cancer therapies to the precise area of the tumour in the brain will vastly improve treatment for brain cancers and reduce treatment side effects. Other neurological conditions will also benefit from the knowledge gained and technology developed from this research.

This world-leading technology utilises existing New Zealand manufacturers and will enhance the medical technology industry. New technology jobs will be created here to make and sell high value medical products to the rest of the world.

Māori participation in all aspects of the project provides technical and cultural attributes unique to New Zealand leading to unanticipated utilities and advantages to maximise the benefits for all New Zealanders.

Invasive pests damage our economy, environment and health. Control or eradication of those pests is expensive and often environmentally damaging. Novel methods for pest control are going to be needed if we are to reach goals such as Predator Free 2050, or to keep back the tide of pests that assail us. Gene-drives are a genetic technology, untried and controversial, that may solve some of our pest problems. Unfortunately, we don’t know if we can make gene drives that are safe, efficacious, socially acceptable and fit for purpose to control New Zealand’s pests. Without this information, we cannot be sure if gene-drives are something we should embrace, or avoid. We aim to provide this missing information by developing gene drives in containment to control invasive social wasps.

The key to developing socially acceptable gene drives is to ensure they are built with advice from the public, Māori groups, and regulators. We will carry out a programme of consultation with public and Māori groups to determine attitudes to gene-drive technologies, innovations from mātauranga Māori and find ways to mitigate concerns raised in the gene-drive systems we develop. Feeding in this information, and that from regulators, we aim, in containment to develop and test wasp gene-drive technologies.

The data we produce will go on to inform public discussion and evidence-based decision-making regarding the adoption, or not, of gene-drives for pest control.

Aotearoa New Zealand is a nation with a proud history of international trade, starting with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, which was as much about the prospects for trade as it was about nation-building between Māori and Pākehā. Colonisation, and with it the demise of the Māori economy, denied Māori the chance to participate in, and benefit fairly from, developing the nation’s prowess as a global food producer. It also meant that what trade means, how it happens and why, evolved without the involvement of Māori people, Māori ideas, and Māori resources. If New Zealand is to transition to a climate-resilient, high-value trading nation, this ought to be done Māori involvement, not as stakeholders, but as tāngata whenua and treaty partners, who have contributions to make and expectations about what trade could look like, be like, and deliver.

Tauhokohoko is a 5-year, Māori-led research programme that sets out to transform trade policy, measurement, and facilitation using Indigenous knowledge, methods, and values for the benefit of Māori and non-Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. We will test the idea that mana motuhake (autonomy) enhances Indigenous trade and its huanga (beneficial) and waiora (wellbeing) effects.

Our expectation is that tauhokohoko will indigenise trade policy and enable mana motuhake and wellbeing through Indigenous trade. We will study 3 new and risky aspects of Indigenous trade: (1) Indigenising trade policy using Indigenous world views, knowledge, and values; (2) measuring Indigenous trade and its relationship to mana motuhake and wellbeing; and (3) enabling Indigenous trade through Indigenous entrepreneurial ecosystems. The research will deliver benefits through our relationships and work with Māori organisations, Crown agencies, and international organisations.