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Public description VISION Growing Kent & Medway (GK&M) will deliver an uplift in Kent and Medway's economy through inclusive and innovation-led growth. The cluster focusses on the region's advanced horticulture, fresh produce packaging, food and drink processing industries, and enabling technologies that drive innovation and growth. As the UK prepares to ...

Tanzania government has recently made a series of policies to support the agriculture development for both demotic and export markets in order to address the local, regional and global demand-supply gap for rice and high-value fruit. However, sustainable production of these crops in Tanzania faces a number of challenges, including the effective management...

Climate models predict that yields of major crops in Africa will decline by up to 8% by 2020 and 10-20% by 2050. Higher temperatures, exacerbated by decreasing water availability for irrigation, will become the primary threat to fine and runner bean production. New varieties and improved growing practices that increase resilience to combined stresses are ...

"There is substantive tree-to-tree variability in tree structure (size, density) and crop load and quality in tree fruit orchards which are the major causes of less than optimal, often poor, overall yield and quality. Previous work in Innovate UK project 101405 showed that tree-to-tree variability in yield ranged from 2-3 fold in the six most productive a...

"The UK fruit industry is under continual pressure from introduction of non-native pests and diseases. Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), _Drosophila suzukii_, was first detected in the UK in 2013 and populations have increased year-on-year since then. The pest lays eggs in fruit before ripening and the larvae destroy the fruit from the inside, so the damage ...

"Spray application of agrochemicals is essential to agriculture and it is vital that it is performed accurately and safely yet hitherto spray operators have had no means of rapidly quantifying spray deposits and coverage in the field. In Innovate UK project 101820, which ended on 30 Sept 2017, we developed a new prototype technology that enables spray ope...

There is increasing consumer and retailer demand for high-quality UK-grown premium dessert apples, and this will increase further post-BREXIT as retailers favour British produce. However, achieving consistent high quality across variable growing seasons is difficult, and premium varieties are susceptible to storage disorders that can render whole consignm...

Soil is one of the three major natural resources essential for agricultural productivity, with the other two being air and water. Soil should be teeming with life---especially microbial life---but intensive farming practices such as frequent ploughing, the removal of crop wastes and the use of heavy machinery have degraded soils throughout the world, and ...

The world population is expected to grow to over 9 billion people by 20401 and food production will need to increase by more than 50% to cope with the expected demand. Improving yields from existing agricultural surface is critical to deliver this deficit as land suitable for conversion to agriculture is dwindling. Crop loss during storage is a significan...

UK raspberry production was worth £109M in 2014, but a further 11KT of berries, worth £59M, are imported each year. A 20% increase in the 14KT of fruit produced p.a. in the UK could be expected to reduce imports by 2.8KT, and raise the value of the UK industry by £15.7M p.a.. However, improved on- farm management of water and fertiliser inputs is needed t...

The accurate monitoring of pests is vital to profitable crop and livestock production and to human health and optimises pest management through improved interventions. This project will develop a full SmartTraps system for remote autonomous monitoring of Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD), an invasive soft and stone fruit pest that has increased the cost of pr...

Reducing fungal fruit rot is a priority in strawberry production in the UK; annual economic losses due to fungal rotting are usually between £30 to £60M. Rot is mainly caused by Botrytis cinerea, Mucor spp. and Rhizopus spp., with their relative prevalence varying over time and growing site. Most strawberry production in the UK is under protection where t...