Global human population forecasts of 10 billion by 2050 will raise food demand by 70% against a requirement for lower environmental impacts. England's livestock agriculture is tasked with increasing efficiency of production while reducing environmental impacts. Thus, GHG emissions must contract by 78% (2035), with a livestock industry seeking net- zero (2050) against a background of escalating energy/input costs. Ruminants only capture around 25% of nitrogen ingested from grasslands and create 45% of UK methane emissions through rumen digestion, manure and slurry. To reduce GHG/nutrient loading, more herbage protein must convert into meat and milk. **NUE-Leg** will directly address this challenge by developing technological solutions to reduce environmental impacts while enhancing the economics and sustainability of grassland farming. UK ruminant production relies predominately on nitrogen fertiliser-driven perennial ryegrass, sometimes with white clover. Increased energy and nitrogen costs highlight the value of forage legume N-fixation which, with enhanced production efficiency and consistency, could lower a ruminant's environmental impact. The industry is over reliant on applied N, largely ignoring the production benefits of proper soil nutrient balances and the specific micronutrient requirements for legume-rhizobium symbiosis. Transformation of the UK ruminant sector to systems that beneficially exploit forage legumes requires a paradigm shift in forage legume breeding and management to enhance key genetic traits tailored to exploit precision crop management strategies that together deliver higher more consistent sward productivity. A novel alliance between legume breeders, soil scientists, NGO/charity and industry across supply chains will provide farmers with the tools and resources to exploit these legume/nutrient benefits for productivity, farm economics and environmental improvement. Academic and industry partners will work with livestock farmers using participatory research to quantify the on-farm impact of innovative varieties of three forage legume species, supported by elite rhizobia strains and state-of-the-art prescription nutrient fertilisers for optimal N-fixation. The benefits for livestock production will be evaluated and mitigation potential for environmental protection analysed using life-cycle-assessment. On-farm trials conducted by supply chain partners/LEAF will test and develop technology in practice and widely demonstrate the achievable benefits to grassland farmers across the beef, sheep and dairy sectors. **NUE-Leg** will deliver blueprints for exploiting novel, elite legume varieties and identify traits for continued breeding improvement, determine farm-specific prescription nutrient need and provide digital KE systems to guide farmers. This integrated optimisation approach will greatly enhance grassland farming in mitigating enteric methane emissions, lowering nitrate losses, while boosting ruminant productivity and sustainable farm businesses.

The UK Processors and Growers Research Organisation will lead this ambitious national research programme with 200 UK farms and 18 partners to design an environmentally transformative, economically sustainable arable rotation system to optimise crop rotations for climate benefit. UK farming accounts for 10% of the UK's total GHG emissions p/a (46.3 MT), 68% of total UK nitrous oxide emissions, 47% of total methane emissions and 1.7% of total CO2\. Arable cropping significantly contributes to these figures, utilising 596,496T of Nitrogen fertiliser p/a. Existing emission estimates are for individual crops, and the impact of these in successive rotational cropping remains unquantified. This project will investigate three opportunity gaps: (i) replacement of 20% of national grain crops with pulses and legumes rotations to establish a net zero farming pathway, (ii) the nutritional and financial feasibility of replacing feed grains (currently representing 70% of the UK grain market) with legumes in 30% national livestock feed and (iii) create a market for this additional yield. The proposed system outputs would contribute to UK Net Zero goals with a total potential reduction of 1.5MT CO2e p/a of the maximum potential 2.8MT for UK agriculture (Defra Agri Climate Report, 2021) in the following ways. * Removal of 233,000T of nitrogen fertiliser and 0.55MT (CO2e) - a 1.2% national reduction - by increasing pulse and legume cropping areas to the rotational optimum of 20% (1M Ha) across UK farms. * Use of subsequent produce in animal feed substitution (replacing 50% of imported soya meal) delivering a further 0.7MT CO2e reduction. * Delivery of a residual N benefit to following crops, leading to an additional 0.25MT CO2e (0.5%). * Delivering a national cost saving to farming of £1032M p/a, by removing 20% of N fertiliser across UK growers and 1.8MT soya imports respectively from the UK farming supply chain. * A policy tool that leads to the adoption of more measures and cost-effective solutions for reducing agricultural GHGs that fit with the farm business' (source: Defra Agri-Climate Report, October 2021). * A set of farmer and grower case studies that can be used to educate and inform the national farming community of the environmental and financial benefits of the research solution. We propose a technologically and financially accessible system for farmers/growers to achieve 100% uptake of a nationally resilient and sustainable food system. Secondary benefits will be the reduction of carbon footprint associated with the domestic replacement of 1.8MT of soya imports p/a.

The Sustainable Agriculture Project or Sus-Ag is a collaboration between LEAF, Sustainable Food Trust and Hummingbird Technologies to create a new digital self-assessment tool for measuring on-farm sustainability, using LEAF's Integrated Farm Management system and the SFT's harmonised framework of metrics for data collection. Hummingbird will be the technical lead on the project and will construct the tool, prioritising three key elements in the process: 1. Automation / integration - Linking the user's existing Farm Management Software (FMS) to the tool. This avoids manual inputs and the duplication of data collection and storage. A wealth of data required for sustainability assessments already sits in a digital form. Therefore building a tool that can automatically 'pull' this information is a vital piece in making the user experience easier and therefore driving adoption. 2. Output Display - Creating a dashboard for the outputs of the assessment is key in driving industry adoption and ensuring transparency and ease of interpretation. Using different tools to visualise the results allows the users to intuitively understand where improvements can be made. Hummingbird also plans to link the survey to field and farm geospatial data to use in the farm benchmarking tool. 3. Interrogation - Using historical sustainability data, Hummingbird will build a layer of predictive modelling that lies behind the tool. This will allow users to model 'what if' scenarios and predict the likely outcomes of changes, thus allowing them to take more of an active management approach to sustainability. The tool will be designed to drive market adoption and offer a contemporary user experience that prioritises technology functionality and offers increased supply chain transparency. Current versions of sustainability self-assessments focus on farmers and retailers, the consortium's desire is to increase that scope to other stakeholders as highlighted below. Our Users 1. Farmers -- are increasingly looking to farm more sustainably using existing data to drive continuous improvement and evidence their performance. Such a platform would support improved productivity as well as create a visual planning support document to enable farmers to hone their efficiency, plans and environmental performance. 2. Asset managers and Land-owners -- concerned about maintaining and enhancing the value of their assets and want to asses their farms and the performance of their tenants. 3. Insurance Companies and Banks -- concerned about understanding the profile of risk associated with farm operations. 4. Food manufacturing companies and Retailers -- wishing to protect their relationship (brand value) and give assurance of 'best practice' in procurement to consumers. 5. Government and Regulators -- seeking to fulfil policy objectives, evidencing 'public money for public goods', meeting Carbon Net Zero targets, SDGs and so forth. 6. Other Corporates -- wishing to be associated with sustainable farming to demonstrate the delivery of their environmental and social goals.

This project aims to understand and utilise plant physical mechanisms for resistance to pest and diseases in soft fruit/bush crops, to overcome changes in EU Directive 91/414/EEC and WFD and satisfy consumer demand for residue free, high quality fruit grown in the UK. Fresh fruit accounts for a market of £4 billion in the UK, and soft fruit/berries account for 17% of this. UK raspberries have a value of £94 million, strawberries £196 million, blackcurrants £12 million and blueberry, currently a minor player has a value of £95 million. Demand for UK grown fruit is increasing dramatically, however few high quality soft fruit varieties are available with adequate pest and disease resistance due to the focus on fruit quality by the major commercial fruit breeding companies. For production to be sustainable, a greater understanding of plant-derived resistances to pests and diseases is required that can be deployed in IPDM programmes to reduce reliance on chemicals but still produce high quality fruit. Physical resistance traits are particularly promising for crop protection because they tend to be more robust against pest and disease adaptation, and unlike chemically-based resistance traits, are less likely to adversely affect fruit quality. This work aims to look at root architecture and morphology, leaf trichomes, cane/stem architecture and plant habit to determine how variation in these physical traits contributes to resistance against major soft fruit pest and diseases. Using the raspberry model, key genes in chromosomal regions controlling variation in these traits can be selected across different fruits and used to greatly reduce the time varieties are in development.