Public Funding for S & A Produce (UK) Limited

The project aims to develop knowledge of the key physical and chemical attributes of growing media relevant to maximising crop performance. We will develop strategies to reuse 'spent' coir and opportunities for selecting a cost-effective alternative to pure/virgin coir whilst maintaining profitability and fruit quality

Project Blue Planet II (BPII) builds on the success of project Blue Planet (BP) that, in under 2 years was able to design, develop and trial a wholly novel and world-first, autonomous platform to perform to maintain overall plant health, fruit quality and yield. As a leading British and international soft fruit producer, S&A are seeking to enhance productivity through their growing techniques and development of innovative equipment to produce even better fruit that will delight and exceed the expectations of their customers and consumer. Through developing automated technology incorporating machine vision systems, supported by the MTC and Capture Automation, they will improve crop yield and quality within their existing UK farms and translated across their international operations. BluePlanet enables a collaboration between a leading international soft fruit producer (S&A), a specialist SME, Capture Automation, and one of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres (MTC). By working with their partners in BluePlanet, S&A will accelerate and de-risk their time to market for new and innovative equipment and allow them to continue to grow and gain market share from their global competitors. Benefits to the end user / customer will be flavour and consistency of fruit whereas benefit to the farmer will be higher quality, yield quantity, growing environment and plant vigour.

"As a leading British and international soft fruit producer, S&A are seeking to enhance productivity through their growing techniques and development of innovative equipment to produce even better fruit that will delight and exceed the expectations of their customers and consumer. Through developing automated technology incorporating machine vision systems, supported by the MTC and Capture Automation, they will improve crop yield and quality within their existing UK farms and translated across their international operations. BluePlanet enables a collaboration between a leading international soft fruit producer (S&A), a specialist SME, Capture Automation, and one of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres (MTC). By working with their partners in BluePlanet, S&A will accelerate and de-risk their time to market for new and innovative equipment and allow them to continue to grow and gain market share from their global competitors. Benefits to the end user / customer will be flavour and consistency of fruit whereas benefit to the farmer will be higher quality, yield quantity, growing environment and plant vigour."

Flavour is a complex trait under large environmental and seasonal effects which already poses a challenge to breeders and will be more problematic with extreme weather events and climate changes. Conventional breeding and selection techniques are slow and hindered by seasonal and environmental variation with QTL mapping also varying with the environment. Recent omics tools have been developed (genome scaffolds, gene expression & metaboloics data, correlation networks) that will allow us to investigate and validate links between berry flavour and its controlling factors (metabolites, genes, environment) to develop a useful model. This feasibility study aims to improve raspberry flavour by utilising omics data alongside historic genotype, phenotype, met & QTL data with novel flavour profiling research to develop new breeding models.

Yield instability negatively impacts UK soft fruit growers, preventing accurate profit prediction and maximisation, causing volatility of UK supply. The problem is now well recognised within industry, though the causes of significant season to season yield variation are unknown. This proposal aims to identify the physiological and biochemical processes underlying yield limitations, thereby identifying causes of the yield volatility phenotype. An examination of the impact of growing environment and management practices on yield will be undertaken to allow development of predictive yield maps & models that provide frameworks for yield optimisation in the short to medium term. This knowledge of availabletools to assist management will be transferred to growers and also used to develop molecular markers for yield stability allowing long-term solutions to the problem, thereby future proofing the UK soft fruit industry, particularly blueberry crops with application to other fruit crops. aspbetraspberrygrowing industry.

There has been increased demand for blueberries in recent years fuelled in part because of their many recognised health benefits. Development of new blueberry cultivars with high fruit and nutritional quality combined with early and late ripening and appropriate climatic adaptation is needed. With the availability of more genomic resources, marker-assisted breeding could be used in cultivar development to more efficiently combine traits for fruit and nutritional quality specific to UK climatic adaptation. This project would therefore develop pre-breeding populations and a high resolution GbS linkage map to allow the UK to develop adapted blueberry cultivars efficiently, cost effectively and in a shorter time frame than would be feasible by traditional breeding means. This would allow the UK to produce more home grown fruit for consumption to increase from the 5% UK fruit currently available.

In the Northern Hemisphere with damper conditions, Phytophthora root rot is causing a rapid decline in raspberry plantations grown in soil and also greatly decreasing the life span of production of raspberries grown in substrate with negative environmental consequenses. Plant based resistance is the only way forward and limited material exists that consistently withstands infection with little/no symptom production. The development of gene based techniques offers an opportunity to identify genes that have a significant role in this plant-pathogen interaction to determine the mechanisms of resistance and develop novel strategies of protection including breeding. How both resistant and susceptible varieties respond at the level of gene expression and how the pathogen responds to the differing phenotypes will identify gene markers and allow strategies for control to be developed.

To develop the necessary knowledge and expertise for holistic crop system control and development.