AgResearch
New Zealand research institute
AgResearch Ltd (formerly known as New Zealand Pastoral Agriculture Research Institute Limited) was one of New Zealand's largest Crown Research Institutes with over 700 staff and revenue of NZ$160.7 million in the year to June 2014. The New Zealand Government merged the institute into the New Zealand Institute for Bioeconomy Science on 1 July 2025.
Main areas of research
AgResearch existed to serve the agriculture and biotechnology sectors of New Zealand industry. This function has transferred to the New Zealand Institute for Bioeconomy Science.
History
AgResearch was created along with New Zealand's other Crown Research Institutes in 1992. In AgResearch's case, this was largely by merging the pastoral agriculture-related portions of MAFTech (the research arm of the then Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) which had predominantly carried out animal research, with the agriculture-related portions of DSIR, which had predominantly carried out research on forage plants.
AgResearch has grown over time by acquiring research organisations "down" the value stream from its initial on-farm emphasis, such as the former Meat Industry Research Institute of New Zealand (MIRINZ) in 1999 and the former Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand (WRONZ, which had been rebranded as Canesis) in 2007.
In March 2009 AgResearch announced that it planned to merge with Lincoln University, but that was subsequently changed to an intention to form a joint venture.
A plan called "Future Footprint" was announced in 2013 to concentrate resources at the Grasslands site in Palmerston North and Lincoln campus near Christchurch. This involved the transfer of about 200 staff mostly from Ruakura (Hamilton) and Invermay (Dunedin) sites.
The public source identifies “AgResearch” as new Zealand research institute. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around AgResearch, Zealand and research.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q389704. VIAF identifies the subject as 137657610. The Library of Congress control number is no2001040530. Authority coordinates are -43.642, 172.471. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014, 2025, 1992 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “AgResearch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.