UPDATED 5PM: Up to a hundred jobs could go at Crown Research Institute AgResearch due to a funding squeeze.  

Waikato University agribusiness professor Jacqueline Rowarth understands AgResearch are talking to staff this week about the possibility of job cuts saying they could shed about 20 percent of its science staff.  

Ms Rowarth said job cuts would be a major blow to scientific research.

"It is more than faintly bizarre to be making so many people redundant at a time when we're going through huge change in environment," she said.

A Ministry of Business report found New Zealand needs to attract more young people training into science, but Ms Rowarth said the lay-offs and low morale at AgResearch will have the opposite effect.

"We need more scientists in New Zealand, but we keep treating them very poorly and so children, of course, aren't interested anymore," she explained.  

Meanwhile, science minister Steven Joyce said every science organisation has to adjust its staffing from time to time to meet the needs of the sector.

Mr Joyce said organisations constantly have to evaluate whether the sector values their research and AgResearch needs to be given room to have discussions with staff and make the changes it needs to make.