Agilent Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, California) and FAPESP, the São Paulo Research Foundation and principal funding agency for academic research in the city of São Paulo, Brazil are jointly funding two research projects. FAPESP and Agilent are working together through the Partnership for Technological Innovation to further multinational collaboration and promote academic research in São Paulo.

The two projects, approved following a joint call for submissions, will provide financial support to advance instrumentation and measurement techniques related to metabolomics in plant microbiology, mass spectrometry, and bioenergy. Launched in October 2011, the call for submissions aims to identify, select, and support world-class research projects to create knowledge and communicate results in the international scientific community. This will be done through close technical collaboration between leading faculty members in the State of São Paulo and Agilent researchers.

One of the approved projects will involve the systematic study of the metabolites resulting from cellular processes under specific environmental and physiological conditions, specifically a study of the physiological response of Eucalyptus in the presence of high CO₂ concentrations and temperature variations.

The second study will identify volatile compounds produced by Brazilian cyanobacteria and explore their effects on other organisms in the ecosystem.