The Marine Institute and the Department of Agriculture and Food invited applications under the Marine Functional Foods Research Initiative in order to develop capability and create new additional capacity in marine functional foods and ingredients research. Applications were invited from research institutions with expertise in the areas of food, health and marine sciences to build on, and further develop, this expertise.
Aims:
The Marine Functional Food Research initiative spans across two Research measures and two Research Programmes within Sea Change, A Marine Knowledge, Research and Innovation Strategy for Ireland 2007 to 2013, and the Agrivision 2015 Action Plan. It will be funded under the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation 2006-2013, and the Food Institutional Research Measure. The Research Initiative aims to address a major objective within the Seafood Processing Research Programme of the Industry Measure of Sea Change and will help to achieve the vision of the Marine Functional Foods Research Programme within the Discovery Measure.
Results:
The successful consortium, led by Teagasc, comprises of a multidisciplinary cross-boarder consortium involving UCD, UCC, NUI,G, UL and UUC. The five-year award will create two new research teams across the six research institutions (including two new Principal Investigators) and seven new PhD scholarships.
It is anticipated that the research teams established by the successful consortium will be in a position to support the future needs of the Irish food and seafood industries; have the capability to participate in international collaborative research programmes (e.g. FP7); and secure significant research funds to enable an expansion of their research programmes.