Abstract. With the advent of chiral perturbation theory (χPT), the low-energy effective field theory of QCD, accurate calculations have become possible for hadronic reactions. The extension of the approach to pion production in nucleon-nucleon collisions requires new high precision experimental information in the near-threshold region.Of especial interest are the processes pp → {pp}sπ 0 and pn → {pp}sπ − , with the formation of a 1 S0 proton pair (diproton) in the final state. The measurements of dσ/dΩ, Ay and the spincorrelation coefficients Ax,x and Ax,z will permit an amplitude analysis that should provide a non-trivial test of the χPT predictions. A combined study of these processes will lead to the isolation of the strength parameter d of the 4N π contact operator in χPT.The ANKE spectrometer is particularly well suited for the study of reactions with a final diproton. The use of the polarised COSY beams and the ANKE polarised internal target allows one to conduct single and double polarisation experiments. Preliminary results on the near-threshold measurements at ANKE of Ay in these processes are presented. The future experimental programme, including the double-polarised experiments, is discussed.1. Introduction 1.1. The diproton programme at ANKE The two-nucleon systems, being the simplest cases of (un-)bound hadrons, play important roles in the studies of hadronic interactions and the structure of the lightest nuclei. The production of the deuteron, a bound state of the proton and neutron, has been studied extensively, both theoretically and experimentally, in a large number of processes. Of particular interest, though, is the investigation of the diproton, an unbound system of two protons. The selection of a very low excitation energy proton pair, E pp < 3 MeV, ensures the dominance of the 1 S 0 state of the diproton, which simplifies significantly the theoretical interpretation. The diproton, denoted below as {pp} s , can be considered as a spin-isospin partner of the deuteron, but with different quantum numbers. As a consequence, reactions that lead to the formation of a diproton involve transitions in the N N system that are different from those in the deuteron case. In particular, the role of the ∆ isobar is expected to be much suppressed because the S-wave ∆N intermediate state is generally forbidden.The detection of a proton pair with E pp < 3 MeV in an experiment requires excellent excitation energy resolution coupled with the ability to resolve the two spatially close proton trajectories. This explains why there have been so few attempts to study reactions with a diproton in the final state. It should be noted that the ANKE spectrometer [1] provides a