Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures projects

This project addresses the growing need for data to improve water management practices on dairy farms. It aims to prove the business case for environmentally sustainable dairy farming practices in New Zealand using world-leading technology and create a commercially available, fully integrated system of sensors, analytics, software, and hardware. The system will consist of linked modules to manage all of a dairy farm’s water supply, use, and impacts that is in real time cost-effective, practical, and useful for the farmer.

This project involved refurbishing the physical assets and digital course material of Campaign for Wool New Zealand Trust’s highly successful Wool In Schools educational programme, focused at primary level students. This programme allows the Trust to connect with and teach the current and next generation of wool consumers about the qualities of wool.

About the Wool in Schools initiative – The Campaign Wool

New-look wool marketing seeks partners – Farmers Weekly

Digitalising Wool: Campaign for Wool's bold plan to engage the next generation of Kiwi farmers – Rural Exchange

The project will pilot the Klenzion Stockwash system to reduce water use and wastewater volume. It will provide tools for the wider red meat industry to incentivise uptake. The system has the potential to reduce the water use for livestock washing by around 50% annually and decrease wastewater output by around 13%.

This project aimed to facilitate the uptake of sustainable construction products and methodologies, and promote the local New Zealand timber industry. V-Quest has developed a set of tools that enable interactive data analysis to balance cost and embodied carbon, and opportunities to optimise design efficiency.

V-Quest

This project builds on a previous SFF Futures project to develop a viable biodegradable option to fossil-based plastic nursery containers. It will include a life cycle analysis of the prototype PolBionix containers, refining the moulds, and working through Intellectual Property requirements.

This project gathered data from green-lipped mussel (Perna canaliculus) farms to populate a database which was used to develop a prototype application (Mussel App). Mussel App enables data-driven decision making around farm operations. Once adopted the Mussel App will lead to improved resilience, increased productivity in existing water space, and ultimately an increase in revenue.

This project will examine the potential spread of disease-causing forest pathogens through forestry operations, such as logging truck movement between sites. It will use high-throughput DNA sequencing methods to identify pathogens in soils/debris sampled from different parts of logging trucks to quantify this risk. Network risk-analysis will be undertaken, and protocols will be established if forestry operations are shown to be sources of unintentional spread of soil-borne forest pathogens.

This project aims to deliver new ryegrass pastures by developing a faster hybrid breeding system. The new pastures are expected to increase productivity by around 20%, providing farmers with options to reduce nitrate leaching, increase carbon sequestration, and/or improve water use efficiency.

The project seeks to test and refine a submerged 20 line spat nursery in semi-open ocean. The project will develop and refine the growing of mussel spat in Clifford Bay. The project will start with 8 lines in year one, and add a further 12 lines in year two. The 20 lines represent around five percent of a commercial scale operation.

The project has successfully scaled up the production of microbially-derived dairy protein from lab scale to pilot scale (up to 20 litre fermentation volume). It gathered data and established conditions for fermentation, increasing yield twentyfold.

This project will deliver the Wave 1 and 2 actions from the Seafood Sector Adaptation Strategy. Waves 1 and 2 are focused on finding ways to enable the seafood sector’s proactive and effective adaptation to climate change.

This project progressed research into a rapid antigen test (RAT) for facial eczema in cattle. It made a breakthrough in the biochemistry of facial eczema, developing a reliable test indicator that can be incorporated into a low-cost on-farm test.  

Facial eczema RAT test a step closer

This project aims to turn locally grown kānuka into high-value gourmet products, bringing new jobs to Ruatōria and giving a boost to the local economy. Nuka Charitable Trust, supported by University of Auckland researchers, will establish a pilot plant producing liquid smoke and juice from kānuka. The liquid smoke could be added to foods ranging from cheese to mussels, while the kānuka juice could be used as an ingredient in the nutraceutical industry for wellness-oriented beverages such as kombucha.

Kānuka tree products potential boon for Tairāwhiti – Government media release

This project will pilot an ocean-based oyster nursery system to grow single seed hatchery spat (as opposed to wild spat), enabling higher oyster quality and lower costs.  If the project is successful it will help the oyster sector grow, increase export revenue, and create new jobs.

This project will establish a blue economy cluster to help ocean-related businesses in the Nelson Tasman region accelerate their growth and boost jobs. The cluster aims to leverage the region as a world-leading ecosystem for developing and commercialising the ocean economy sustainably.

Moananui impact report [PDF, 12 MB]

New project set to supercharge ocean economy in Nelson Tasman – Beehive

In an industry first, this project proved that New Zealand lamb can be automatically graded for intramuscular fat, hot and in-line. A novel sensor system, called Marbl™, was tailored for New Zealand carcasses and validated at a processing facility. The non-destructive, automated measurements can be combined with other traits to differentiate products and create premium brands.

This project delivered the Vine to Wine book, a winegrowing industry education resource to support secondary school teachers to include winegrowing related topics in NCEA levels 1,2 and 3. The resource contains industry reference information, data and practical examples.

Vine to Wine teaching resource for Years 11 to 13

This project will investigate the importance of microbial communities. It will compare microbial communities, ranging from conventional to regenerative agriculture. By better understanding the relationship between soil biology and soil health, this project is the first step in being able to identify biological indicators that can be used to monitor the health and productivity of our soil.  

The project aims to validate a novel free farrowing system as a viable replacement for the farrowing crate in New Zealand. It will support research into the welfare, performance, and practicality of this new crate free system for sows and piglets at farrowing and during lactation.

This project screened 93 native microalgal strains and selected 10 lead candidates that could potentially be used as a nutritious, high-protein addition to food products. Chlorella vulgaris emerged as the lead strain. Kernohan Engineering, with input from Nutrition by Water™ and Cawthron Institute, designed and built a 3 litre portable bioreactor to facilitate scaled-up biomass production. Cultivation trials were completed. Following a refinement phase, a successful batch yielded 23kg of wet biomass suitable for downstream processing and the production of palatable food prototypes, such as protein concentrates, brownie bars and Marine Whey™ mozzarella. Next steps involve establishing algae-derived products as a novel food category under the Marine Whey brand.

Govt backs bid to make food from microalgae – Beehive