Funding for this research project is supported by a grant recently approved by the Australian government's Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and Kalamazoo.

The research will be coordinated by CSIRO in Perth.

It begins this month and field activity and laboratory studies are expected to be finished by August.

The first stage of the research finished last year and mapped geochemical gradients to provide discriminators of both the primary stratigraphy and alteration associated with gold mineralisation at the Wattle Gully gold deposit.

That information is to be applied as exploration vectors to fresh target areas.

The second stage of the research will use the latest technologies to probe the ground at the South Muckelford and Castlemaine gold projects near Bendigo, Victoria.

It aims to leverage Kalamazoo's already planned gridded soil and rock sampling program, which is due to start in either February or March.

That program will consist of about 1000 samples.

The samples will be sent to Labwest for Ultrafine+ analysis of major and trace elements in a separate CSIRO research project led by Dr Ryan Noble.

While the Ultrafine+ project, ­ which is capable of analysing soil particles of less than two microns in size, is not part of the Kalamazoo-CSIRO research, the results from its analysis of the Kalamazoo samples will be.

The Ultrafine+ data will help detect and map significant shifts in white mica chemistry in zones that are anomalous in pathfinder elements such as arsenic and antimony.

The research is part of Kalamazoo's "exploring smarter" plan that focuses on using cutting-edge exploration tool kits and methodologies that can deliver exploration targets with lessing drilling and minimal ground disturbance.