The country's other specialist land-based university, Massey, could also be added to the fold in some form in the future, as Lincoln and Massey continue to explore ways of collaborating.
The Lincoln and AgResearch proposed merger announcement yesterday caught the rural community by surprise, but Lincoln's chancellor, Tom Lambie, said bringing the two institutions together made sense.
He said it would create a major land-based research entity that allowed the seamless exchange of staff and collaboration, while also enhancing post graduate studies and research for Lincoln students.
It would create a concentration of science and research expertise in areas he said were vital to the nation's economic and environmental future.
There would be no changes to the two organisations' campuses, but Mr Lambie said in an interview there would be an unknown number of redundancies among corporate support staff at the university.
He saw immediate benefits from researchers collaborating, especially in the area of climate change.
"By bringing teams together, it makes us a very powerful player."
Research overlapped in pastoral farming, food and textile science, and the two organisations, together with Crop and Food Research and Massey, already collaborated in the National Centre for Advanced Bio-Protection Technologies based at Lincoln, one of seven Government-sponsored Centres of Research Excellence.
The merger would create an entity Mr Lambie said would make Lincoln one of the top-five ranked institutions of its type in the world and create the southern hemisphere's first world-class land-based university.
"New Zealand needs to lift its rate of productivity growth and the obvious place to start is with the land-based industries."
AgResearch employs 640 research staff among a total workforce of 1000 people, and attracts $150 million in research funding a year.
Lincoln was the country's third oldest university, formed in 1878 as a School of Agriculture linked to Canterbury College in Christchurch.
In 1896, it separated from Canterbury College and was renamed Canterbury Agriculture College with its own governing body and ability to award degrees.
It was officially named Lincoln College in 1961 and was a constituent of the University of Canterbury until 1990 when it became a fully self-governing university.
Today it has a roll of 4500 students and an academic staff of 250 with 31 full professors and 23 associate professors.
Mr Lambie expected consultation and final details to take a month before a final decision was made on whether to complete the merger.
The proposal has been applauded by Meat and Wool New Zealand chairman Mike Petersen, who said it was a "good strategic move" and by Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson, who saw it as positive for agriculture and one that would help grow the economy.
The proposed merger
How Lincoln University would look after a merger with AgResearch:
• Combined annual revenue of $230 million.
• Combined assets of $485 million.
• Additional annual revenue of $50 million.
• Annual cost savings $2.5 million.
• Merger cost $2.5 million.
