An international research project aimed at finding new ways to process food and reduce diet-related diseases may be stopped or delayed because the Romanian state hasn't financed the local team involved in the project.

Romania's Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine University (USAMV) in Cluj-Napoca has not receive the expected financing from the National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation (ANCSI) for this project, casting doubts on the country’s ability to participate in similar initiatives and potentially endangering the project, says Dan Vodnar, head of the local research team, quoted by Mediafax.

The project, titled LONGLIFE - Food Fermentations for Purpose: Health Promotion and Biopreservation, is one of the two projects launched at the end of 2015 on the topic of the Joint Action ‘Food Processing for Health’ of the Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) - A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life. Alongside the ProHealth project, it looks at “innovative and scientific approaches to optimize food processing to better allow different foods contribute to or improve health.”

The Cluj-Napoca university is a partner in the project alongside Ireland's Teagasc and University College Cork, University of Bologna in Italy, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, AgResearch Limited from New Zealand, and Institute of Animal Reproduction and Food Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The team of researchers in Cluj-Napoca asked ANCSI for a EUR 300,000 financing, after entering the project with the institution’s agreement, Vodnar explained.

“We won an international project that Romania refuses to finance. Out of a consortium of six countries, Romania is the only one that does not offer financing, even though international referents accepted it as a winning project […]. ANCSI has kept postponing the financing, and on January 16, 2017, we received a surreal answer, telling us we do not receive the financing because the agreement says Romania can finance such projects but is not compelled to. It is completely abnormal, because USAMV entered the project with the agreement of ANCSI, and now we are told that there are no funds,” Vodnar told Mediafax.

The Cluj-based team wanted to spend part of the financing to acquire equipment worth EUR 200,000 to be used in the research.

In the Longlife project, which looks at “the fate and function of food constituents and determinants of bio-accessibility, bio-availability, and efficacy of food ingredients to advance fermented functional food design,” the Romanian team was tasked with looking at the bio-digestibility and bio-accessibility of certain nutrients in the human body. They were supposed to test products meant for use by people with illnesses requiring distinct diets with the help of an equipment functioning as an artificial digestive system.

“These were foods for children with diabetes, for the elderly with diabetes, in which the quantity of sugar is reduced. They were products easy to chew and digest, such as bakery, dairy or pre-fermented meat, low-calorie pasta,” Dan Vodnar explained.

“In this consortium no one can do the work of the USAMV team, and the project risks being stopped for the simple fact that Romania, that ANCSI doesn’t care. […] This denial of financing is a huge image damage for us, and the people in the project will never collaborate with us or with Romania on such a project. It is a signal of mistrust regarding our country,” Vodnar said.

Romania has one of lowest budgets for research in the EU and ranked last in the European Union in 2014 for the share of the research and development expenditures in the GDP, which was only 0.38%, despite the Government's promises to encourage research over the years.

Romania's National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation (ANCSI) became the Ministry of Research and Innovation in the new Government led by Sorin Grindeanu, pointing to the fact that research would get more support. The minister of research is 60-year old Serban Constantin Valeca, a former nuclear engineer, who was also research minister in the Adrian Nastase cabinet, from 2000 until 2004.

editor@romania-insider.com