WELLINGTON -- Chinese and New Zealand scientists have begun work on a New Zealand farm to study ways of reducing nutrient run-off and improving water quality in a series of joint government-sponsored environment projects.

New Zealand Minister of Science and Innovation Steven Joyce, who is currently in China, said Friday that reducing rural water pollution was a key priority under the New Zealand-China Environment Cooperation Agreement signed in 2008.

"Managing nutrient discharge is an important environmental issue for both New Zealand and China. It's encouraging that our scientists are sharing their expertise and working together to reduce pollution in rural waterways in China," Joyce said in a statement from his office.

The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment and dairy giant Fonterra were funding field trials and the New Zealand government' s AgResearch institute was providing technical support, while China's Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Tsinghua University's School of Environment were partners in this project. The project would test different ways of using stock effluent as fertiliser and how this affected plant growth, nutrient uptake, greenhouse gas emissions and the quality and quantity of leachate or runoff.

It involved six different cropping trials running from October 2013 until mid-2015.