Food-N-Co

Croatia
MoSES

Ministry of Science, Education and Sports

MZOS is the government body responsible for development and follow-up of RTD activities such as: information dissemination, developing network building capacities, or supporting application of scientific achievements. The Ministry is responsible for development of national legislation in RTD sector,  for planning, coordination and implementation of IT activities, as well as coordination of technology development; for monitoring, analysis and realisation of cooperation on the basis of bilateral and multilateral agreements such as hosting researchers from abroad and pave the way for Croatian researchers to be hosted by an institution abroad. The Ministry also harmonise financing of RTD programmes and contractual projects in order to develop National RTD programme and relevant RTD projects.

The Department for European Integration, within the Ministry, administers activities linked to RTD activities on EU and international levels and manage FP6 Office/NCP network.  

FP6 office of the Ministry participate(d) in six FP projects: (1 FP5 INCO2 Accompanied Measure project and 5 FP6 SSA projects) and supported activities in several other FP6 projects as co-partner, advisor or data provider.  FP6 Office has 5 full-time employees plus the network of 116 FP6 contact persons situated on all faculties and research institutes.

The Ministry has formal and continuous cooperation with the network of International cooperation offices on faculties and institutes, Euro Info Centre Croatia, Chamber of Commerce and all professional organisations related to RTD and Engineering (transport sector included).
 
One of the strongest Croatian research potentials in biotechnology lies within the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology of the University of Zagreb, which is a centre of excellence in education and research in food technology, biotechnology, nutrition and environmental sciences. Some of the currently financed projects within the HITRA (Croatian Innovative Technological Programme) in the field of biotechnology deal with the following research topics:

  • wave bioreactor for biotechnological process improvement using animal cells
  • purification of discharge water by using membrane techniques
  • membrane filters and use of membrane filtration in food industries
  • isolation procedure of ß-glucan from yeast biomass
  • 5'-Ribonucleotides from brewer's yeast. 

Isolation and development of production procedures

  • iintegrated process of hop pellets production without previous conditioning of hop
  • barrier characteristics of polymeric packaging materials
  • production of cereal extrudates as raw materials for food industry
  • production and usage of microbe starter-cultures in bakery

A number of other higher education and research institutions, working closely with the Minstry also conduct research in the field of biotechnology, the most important of which are: the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of Zagreb (e.g.  agricultural models for production of biodisel fuel); the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology of the University of Zagreb, the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology of the University of Split, the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Osijek, the Institute for Agriculture in Osijek and the Institute Ruđer Bošković.

Description of staff involved in the project

The NCP person in charge for this project is Andreja Zulim, M.A., Croatian FOOD NCP and NCP for HRM Actions of FP6 programme, working at the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports in the Department for European Integration on administration, implementation of different EU programmes (COMENIUS, YOUTH, and FP6) and preparation of Republic of Croatia to enter future lifelong learning programmes.

By far she has coordinated different projects (UNESCO), including student exchanges, student assessment, debates (European Youth Parliament). She has organised and coordinated different workshops, seminars, events, such as: European days, creative writing, British days, literature forum on emancipation of women and cultural differences).

As MOBILITY and FOOD NCP she has been involved in dissemination on FP6 through preparation of promotion material, organizing info days, conferences, workshops and training.

As FOOD NCP, apart from FOOD-N-CO project, she is involved in managing the EU AGRI MAPPING FP6 project within the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports as well.

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