A joint New Zealand-China environmental science project investigating ways to improve water quality has started a series of field trials on one of Fonterra's dairy farms in China.
The project was developed as a result of the bilateral New Zealand-China Environment Co-operation Agreement, which was signed in 2008.
The agreement aims to jointly address environmental issues and work towards the promotion of sustainable development. Reducing rural water pollution is a key priority.
The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment and Fonterra are funding the trials with technical support from AgResearch. The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and Tsinghua University's School of Environment are also partners.
The project will test different ways of using stock effluent as fertiliser and how it affects plant growth, nutrient uptake, greenhouse gas emissions and the quality and quantity of leachate or runoff.
It involves six different cropping trials on a Fonterra dairy farm in Hebei province in northern China, that will run until mid-2015.
New Zealand's Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce, who is currently in China, says managing nutrient discharge is an important environmental issue for both countries.
