The CSIRO Staff Association has also been notified of the job cuts, which will affect research sites in South Australia, NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

This new round of job cuts to CSIRO's food science research comes less than two years after the national science agency announced it would shed 50 jobs and close its Sydney food processing test plant in a bid to save $6million.

But Federal Science Minister Kim Carr has defended the job cuts, saying CSIRO ''frequently reviews staffing levels to ensure the right fit with strategy''.

Senator Carr said CSIRO was ''looking at the structure and future staffing levels of food and nutritional sciences as it updates its strategy in this field''. No final decisions had been taken and no research facilities would be closed.

A CSIRO spokesman confirmed Food and Nutritional Sciences chief Professor Martin Cole addressed staff yesterday about ''issues affecting the division's finances'' ahead of executive and board meetings later this month to sign off on the agency's 2010-11 budget.

''We are currently looking at the structure and future staffing levels of Food and Nutritional Sciences as we rebuild our strategy in food and nutrition. We will be investing new money to build the science basis of this important area,'' the spokesman said.

The division has already cut jobs in cheese research, refrigerated transport, food microbiology, process engineering, meat industry services and food chemicals safety testing.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.