Government agencies in New Zealand and Japan are seeking to strengthen joint research into " functional foods" with government funding, New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) announced Friday.

The New Zealand-Japan Strategic International Collaborative Research Program (SICORP) would see MBIE invest up to 400,000 NZ dollars (336,587 U.S. dollars) each into three projects over two years.

The funding would be offered to New Zealand-based research teams with established collaborative links with Japanese research partners in one of the three fields: functionality evaluation or health applications of foods or ingredients; development of food products or processing methods; and improving food safety.

Japan is one of New Zealand's key strategic science and innovation partners and a world leader in functional foods and beverage research and development, MBIE international relationships manager Karla Falloon said in a statement.

"New Zealand and Japan could significantly benefit from close collaboration on this topic. SICORP is designed to build on and reinforce this partnership," said Falloon.

SICORP was jointly established in 2009 by MBIE and the Japan Science and Technology Agency to enable research collaboration on topics where the two countries possess complementary capabilities. Endi

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