Nutrigenomics: The research team

The nutrigenomics research is being carried out by researchers from the University of Auckland and government-funded research institutes (Crown Research Institutes, or CRIs): Plant & Food Research (formed by the merger of Crop & Food and HortResearch at the end of 2008) and AgResearch.

This is because the success of the nutrigenomics project depends on the input of people with a range of different skills and expertise, including nutrition, disease, genetics, food chemistry, biochemistry, statistics and ethics.

Transcript

Dr Warren McNabb (

I cannot do nutrigenomics with myself in isolation, or with my team in isolation. We don’t have all the capabilities needed to do it, and so what I like about this particular grouping, Nutrigenomics NZ, is I get to work with a whole range of different people with different capabilities.

Professor Lynn Ferguson ( Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland )

So it’s the University of Auckland in association with three Crown Research Institutes, and the Crown Research Institutes are all ones that have got major components in food - lots of expertise in food technology, food science. So it’s HortResearch, Crop & Food, and AgResearch. Each have their own particular specialisations. We’ve got expertise in diseases. We are a biomedical-focused university.

Dr Julian Heyes ( Plant & Food Research)

Our common goal is to develop expertise in this area called nutrigenomics - matching sophisticated knowledge about the food we eat, with sophisticated knowledge about the differences between different individual human beings.

Professor Lynn Ferguson (

The pooling of expertise, the ideas, the range of ideas that are coming in certainly excite me and I hope they excite some of the other people in the programme.