Continued Government funding for the Lincoln University-based Bio-Protection Research Centre has delighted Professor Alison Stewart, the Centre Director.

The Bio-Protection Centre will receive continued funding of almost $24 million for the period 2009 through to 2015. The Centre is the only one of the seven New Zealand Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs) in the South Island.

Results of the new funding application round that will finance the CoREs through to 2015 were announced on 5 June by the Tertiary Education Minister Dr Michael Cullen.

"We are absolutely delighted" says Professor Stewart. "We see the renewal of funding and the increase as a validation of all our work and efforts since the Bio-Protection Centre was established."

The Lincoln University-based Centre, launched in February 2003, is a collaboration of four partner institutions – Lincoln University, Massey University, AgResearch and Crop & Food Research and 13 other research and academic institutes. Its work is conducted under four "themes" - Biosecurity; Biocontrol; Agri-biotechnology and Matauranga Maori Bio-Protection.

The Centre benchmarks itself against international capability and is at the forefront of global developments in bio-protection. It has strong links with Biosecurity New Zealand, the Government body overseeing this country's biosecurity activity and the protection of New Zealand's economic, social and natural environments from exotic biological threats.

A central facility at the Bio-Protection Centre is the NZ Biotron, an enclosed environment laboratory withplant growth chambers which can be controlled to simulate a variety of external growing conditions.

Lincoln University's Acting Vice-Chancellor, Dr Chris Kirk, describes the Government's announcement of renewed funding as "a full endorsement that Lincoln University has demonstrated the intellectual and organisational maturity to host a research centre that is absolutely pivotal to New Zealand's bio-based economy".

"Bio-protection is an area of great strategic importance to New Zealand" he says. "It is new knowledge and the development of new technologies that will be the basis of New Zealand's future bio-protection capability."

"This demonstration of on-going Government confidence in the Bio-Protection Centre is a huge compliment to the Centre's Board of Management, it’s Director, Executive Management Group, Theme Leaders, investigators and all the associated scientists, technical staff, administrators and postgraduate students. They have worked tremendously hard to achieve this result" says Dr Kirk.