Ecosystem management

Te Whakahaere Pūnahi Hauropi

Empowering sectors to adapt to changes in circumstances or environment, while enabling them to deliver functions needed by farming businesses, families, local communities and the value chain.

Improving the performance of our land and water

Sustainable agri-food production systems improve the performance of our land and our water resources.

Working with industry and stakeholders, we are looking to understand and develop innovative land and water-use strategies and tools that reduce our environmental footprint at both farm and catchment scale, while maintaining and improving quality of life for both the present and future generations.

Our aim is to deliver equitable and balanced economic, social, cultural and environmental outcomes for all New Zealand.

Additional capabilities
- Environmental Systems Modeling
- Environmental Science
- Microbial Solutions
- Plant-Microbe Interactions
- Plant Biotechnology
- Weeds and Pests
- Climate Change Impacts & Adaptation
- Agro-ecology
- Land Use Function and Evaluation
- Agricultural Systems and Reproduction

Our Land and Water National Science Challenge

The Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, hosted by AgResearch, aims to preserve the most fundamental treasures of our country – our land, water and associated ecosystems – while producing value from those same treasures.

This Challenge works to answer the difficult questions from producers and industry such as: how much can I reduce my environmental footprint and still be profitable? If this footprint is still too much, then what other land uses can I change to and where in the landscape is this most profitable and most sustainable?

Our Land and Water

Our Land and Water is one of 11 National Science Challenges funded by MBIE and is hosted by AgResearch. The Challenge has 14 research parties including all of Aotearoa New Zealand’s CRI’s and the majority of the country’s universities.

Find out more

Catch Crops for Cleaner Freshwater

Research is starting to show that planting catch crops may have potential to improve the land after a winter of leaky grazing by taking up the nitrogen from the soil and reducing water runoff.

AgResearch and Plant and Food Research are undertaking a four-year ‘Catch crops for cleaner freshwater’ project, funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change – Freshwater Mitigation programme.

Trial sites have been established on farms in Southland, Canterbury and on the West Coast, and a lysimeter has been installed at the Southern Dairy Hub near Invercargill.

Learn in real-time

The project can be followed in real-time through a Facebook page and Whats App group. You can see the scientists and technicians working in the field and be updated on the initial findings and key messages.