Dubbed the Solutions for Intelligent Nutrition, or Nutritech, the new program will try to address the functional food industry's challenge of how to create tasty and convenient products made from health promoting ingredients.

Market research has backed-up the notion that companies that innovate and find ways to make healthy foods taste good will reap the rewards in sales.

Industry researcher, Global Industry Analysts, predicts the world's functional food and beverage market will reach $109bn by 2010. Collectively, the US, Europe and Japan account for approximately 90 per cent of global consumption of functional food and beverage.

The market analyst underscored that while the functional food and drinks market has been moving to the forefront thanks to innovative products, consumers are not willing to forgo the pleasures of taste - even for health.

Accordingly, the Solutions for Intelligent Nutrition (Nutritech) is looking to combine consumer and health sciences into a research program drawing on enzymatic and microbial technology to isolate functional ingredients, as well as to modify food characteristics to please consumers.

"We will also work out new ways of interacting with companies in order to bring together technology push and business opportunities," said the program's coordinator, professor Kaisa Poutanen.

The two organizations have also pledged to examine the motivation behind making food choices for well-being. Set to run to 2011, the program is targeting both the food and packaging industries, as well as the communication and healthcare sectors.

Using VTT's expertise in bioprocessing, one of the aims of the Nutritech program is to identify how taste, sensory and digestive factors impact nutrient bioavailability.

The University of Kuopio's role will include conducting trials relating food compounds to the prevention of chronic disease.

A key drive behind this initiative is to take the research results to the industry level and on to consumers by working with interested companies. The Nutritech program website will be available in November 2007.

VTT this week announced another research collaboration, this time with Agrifood Research Finland (MTT) for a technology for isolating beta-glucan from oats.

The partnership says the technology allows increased applications for the heart-healthy oat fractions - for beverage, dairy, baking and snack applications - and in addition is cost-effective.