Fibe Ltd has shown that potato stems are a source of high quality textile fibre, attracting the fashion industry seeking sustainable sources of fibre. Supplying to Fibe our potato stems, which are a nuisance to harvest operations, is attractive to us ( Sentry and Dyson), as it saves costs and improves the sustainability profile of the farm by valorising crop waste and makes us (and other farmers) essential contributors to a greener fibre production industry for the UK. The adoption of new technologies into commercial operations may come with certain risks, particularly for high value crops such as potato. Though preliminary tests with the new mechanical stem harvester have been very positive, we need to quantify any impact stem harvesting may have on potato tuber quality in farm-scale tests. Sentry and Dyson will work with Niab and Fibe to monitor the crop and optimise the logistics of stem harvesting under a range of conditions to ensure smooth interfacing with other farm operations. Results will give farmers confidence that provision of stems for fibre becomes a financially and logistically viable contribution to the farm enterprise, and will make potatoes a dual-purpose crop, obtaining more value from the same land and inputs.

Thrips can damage fruit quality and reduce yields, particularly in integrated pest management (IPM) and organic farming systems where pesticide use is limited. Current monitoring methods rely heavily on visual inspection and trapping, which are time-consuming, labour-intensive, and often miss early infestations. To address this challenge, the project will create a rapid molecular test panel capable of accurately identifying multiple species of thrips at low thresholds before damage to crops and infestations becomes apparent. Building on previous work that successfully developed a test for Western Flower Thrips (_Frankliniella occidentalis_), this project will expand the panel to include three additional thrips species of concern to strawberry crops. These are Rose thrips _(Thrips fuscipennis)_, Onion thrips (_Thrips tabaci_), and Flower thrips (_Frankliniella intonsa_). This "thrips panel" will use quantitative PCR (qPCR), a highly sensitive method that can detect low levels of DNA from pests to identify the thrips present in crops. Additionally, we will simplify the acquisition of samples for analysis of thrips presence. This will be achieved by developing a method that utilises environmental DNA (eDNA). Environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, is the genetic material left behind by organisms in their environment, such as in water, soil, or on the surfaces of plants. For this project, we will target flower washes for the acquisition of thrips DNA. This method is more scalable than examining individual thrips and flower samples for the presence of thrips or damage. Together, these two innovations, the expanded qPCR panel and the eDNA flower-wash protocol, will be integrated and validated under laboratory conditions that mimic field conditions. Niab, a UK research organisation with expertise in molecular diagnostics, entomology, and plant health, will conduct this research. The team will design and validate the thrips panel in the laboratory and test its performance under controlled growing conditions, aiming to demonstrate readiness for use by industry (growers and agronomists). This diagnostic tool has the potential to transform how soft fruit pests are monitored. It offers a scalable alternative to manual scouting, supporting more precise and timely pest control decisions. By enhancing early detection, the tool could reduce crop damage, limit pesticide use, and contribute to more sustainable and resilient strawberry production in the UK. The project aligns with Defra's goals to enhance plant health, strengthen biosecurity, and support the commercial development of innovative diagnostics for regulated and emerging pest threats.

BugBiome has **harnessed crop-associated microbes** to develop an **innovative bioinsecticide** aimed at **combating aphids and the viruses they transmit**. This project will **leverage the first asset** from BugBiome's core platform, which integrates microbiology, entomology and engineering biology to discover safe and effective alternatives to conventional chemical insecticides. The project is in **collaboration** with the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (**NIAB**), experts in **field trial design and implementation**. The primary objective of this project is to **validate the effectiveness** of BugBiome's first bioinsecticide against aphids, focusing on its application in **both controlled environments and field settings** with economically important British and global crops. Specifically, the project aims to evaluate **pest protection of oilseed rape crops from aphid infestations and yellow viruses**, thereby enhancing **crop productivity and sustainability.** BugBiome's approach is deeply rooted in sustainable principles. By **understanding natural microbial communities**, BugBiome has **discovered potent bioinsecticides** from crops against aphids. The project will involve rigorous testing of BugBiome's aphid bioinsecticide and **improvements to its formulation** ensuring the bioinsecticide is both **effective and adaptable** to varying agricultural conditions and standard farming practices for pesticide application in the South East and beyond. The anticipated outcomes of this project include: * **Validated Performance**: Demonstrating the bioinsecticide's effectiveness in protecting crops under both controlled and field-based production systems. * Product Development: **Advancing the formulation** of the bioinsecticide to improve field performance, cost of production and suitability for end users. * Viral Transmission Quantification: Assessing the **impact** of the bioinsecticide **on the transmission of viruses** by aphids between treated and control plants. BugBiome bioinsecticides represent a significant **advancement in agricultural productivity**. By harnessing the **power of microbes in a targeted and sustainable manner**, BugBiome aims to establish a **new standard in crop protection**. This approach aligns with the needs of modern agriculture while remaining committed to ecological balance and biodiversity conservation to provide farmers with an effective crop protection tool against aphids.

The UK orchard fruit industry was worth £293.4M in 2023, but unsated demand for home-grown fruit meant that £99M worth of plum and sweet cherry were imported in 2023 (DefraStats). Optimum nutrition of UK orchard crops is essential to ensure high yields of phytonutritious fruit with good storage potential, but there are no robust grower guidelines. Consequently, commercial stone fruit growers are unable to schedule fertilisers to match demand with supply, and so current fertiliser practices are wasteful and expensive. An estimated 48kg/ha of applied nitrogen (N) is not taken up by the trees, and so losses of this and other applied fertilisers are high but remain unquantified. Our aim here is to reduce inputs of N, phosphorous(P), and potassium(K) to better match demand with supply in commercial stone fruit production. Our novel sensor technologies will provide real-time data of soil NPK levels to help inform growers' decisions. Norton Folgate leads our consortium of commercial stone fruit growers (A.C. Hulme, Domum Agrum, Torry Hill Farm) and technology providers (Delta-T Devices, Driemtech, EDT DirectIon, Fotenix, Soil Moisture Sense) and academic partner NIAB. Our low-input NPK approach is sustainable and will improve on-farm production efficiency and profitability.

The Sustainable Nitrogen Application Project (SNAP) will develop techniques for precision application of nitrogen in commercial apple orchards. Standard industry practice is to apply a uniform rate of fertiliser across an orchard or vineyard at set times in the season. However, different trees and different regions in the orchard will have different requirements for fertiliser depending on the size, vigour, and amount of crop on the trees. By varying the rate of nitrogen applied across the orchard, it can be concentrated on trees that need it and are able to use it readily. Weaker areas of the orchard can be strengthened, and overall homogeneity of the growing block can be improved, which leads to higher yields for the grower at harvest. SNAP will use recent developments in crop remote sensing and precision application hardware to help growers optimise and reduce their use of nitrogen fertilisers, whislt driving the global fruit industry's adoption of precision farming techniques. This will deliver benefits to growers through increased yields, and to the wider environment through reduced environmental damage, increased food security and improved climate risk mitigation.

This project, led by Crop Intellect in collaboration with NIAB, SRUC, and Branston Ltd., aims to innovate foliar fertilizer technology for potato crops using photocatalysis. By converting air pollutants like NOx into beneficial nitrates, this advanced fertilizer significantly reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers while maintaining crop yield and quality. The project's goal is to develop a tailored R-Leaf formulation for potatoes, optimize application dosages and protocols, and rigorously assess its environmental impact, focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions such N2O and pollutants like NOx gases. Branston will conduct large-scale tests to ensure practical application and sustainability, supporting farmers in adopting this cost-effective and eco-friendly solution. The successful implementation of R-Leaf technology promises significant environmental benefits, including improved air and water quality, reduced emissions, and enhanced soil health. This project represents a major step forward in sustainable agriculture, offering a viable alternative to traditional fertilizers and contributing to broader environmental and economic goals.

"Financial strain in the UK strawberry sector has seen smaller growers exiting the industry. Home production has decreased by 25% since 2019, yet imports supply 34% of demand (DefraStats). To meet unsated demand for UK berries sustainably, new approaches and technologies are needed. Crop losses from excessive fertiliser mean growers need new guidelines. NIAB is developing variety-specific Nitrogen-demand models, for instance in strawberry (IUK 10097323): N savings of 77% are possible without reducing yields or quality. Despite offering year-round production, reduced environmental impact and shorter supply chains, strawberry production in TCEA is more challenging than leafy salads. Innovation is needed to transform productivity, resource use, and profitability. **InnoPhyte Consulting** (science and project management consultancy), leads our consortium, with **FlexFarming** (commercial TCEA strawberry grower), **Matrex** (advanced materials and technology for harvesting and concentrating atmospheric CO2), and **NIAB** (the largest UK horticulture research institute). We will develop a new nutrition management approach for commercial TCEA strawberry production. A model validated for lower N inputs/emissions and plant leaf area reduces manual leaf removal. Lower photosynthetic capacity will be offset by CO2 enrichment through MOF technology. Testing project outputs in FlexFarming's facilities will assess the commercial and environmental viability of our approach."

Grass Plan aims to revolutionise nutrient management for grassland farming systems, which make up c. two-thirds of all UK farmland. By consolidating all aspects of nutrient management into a single digital platform, it will integrate current nutrient management practices and lay the groundwork for incorporating advanced nutrient flow models in the future. Existing platforms struggle with the complexity of managing nutrient flows across mixed farming systems, where organic and inorganic inputs are combined. This fragmentation necessitates the use of multiple tools by farmers and advisors, hindering efficiency and limiting the sustainable use of nutrients. Grass Plan addresses this challenge by integrating sophisticated nutrient budgeting and process-based models into a unified digital interface, building on successful implementations in arable farming. NIAB will leverage its research expertise and industry connections to develop robust soil and agronomic models, enhancing the platform's functionality. An advisory panel including agronomists and industry stakeholders, such as representatives from water companies, will provide guidance on algorithm development and user interface design. The outputs will integrate into Soil Benchmark's existing, popular platform, already used across more than 368,000ha. Grass Plan promises to transform nutrient management practices on grasslands, optimising nutrient use efficiency, mitigating pollution, and supporting resilient food production.

Soil health through AI-driven Learning (SAIL) is an innovative project aimed at revolutionizing soil management for UK farmers, aligning with the competition's goal to support data-driven decision-making and administrative task automation. Our Soil Management Planner platform, 'Soil Sage', has already streamlined the production of Soil Management Plans, using a human-designed algorithm. Since its November 2023 launch, it's been utilized by over 1000 farms, covering 270,000ha to support delivery of the government's new SAM1 action under SFI23\. Without Soil Sage, farmers or agronomists invest hours manually crafting these plans, often relying on tools like Excel and Word, ill-suited for handling complex geospatial information. Despite reducing plan creation time to 20-30 minutes, manual edits to the pre-populated risk assessments and proposals are still needed. With a (fast-growing) training dataset of the tens of thousands of manual edits already made by users, SAIL will introduce AI to further expedite this process. This will enable the generation of accurate soil management plans in just 2-3 minutes - a 10x improvement over our current platform and 100x quicker than manual methods. As most farms across England require these plans imminently to claim SFI23 subsidy, Soil Sage's 100x faster, AI-enabled, process will lower adoption barriers, enabling us to reach tens of thousands of farms within the next two years. Not only will SAIL enhance the efficiency of our platform, but it will also bolster local accuracy, facilitating the generation of superior soil management plans at a rapid pace. AI will allow us to incorporate a ground-up innovation model, learning from and sharing the experiences of farmers and advisors expressed through platform edits. This approach ensures that our plans offer not only the latest scientific insights but also practical wisdom from those directly engaged in soil management. SAIL contributes to achieving DEFRA's targets: **1\. 70% of farms in SFI23 by 2028\.** \>SAIL lowers the time barrier to entry of one of the key SFI actions. **2\. 60% of England's agricultural soil sustainably managed by 2030\.** \>SAIL delivers best-in-class soil management plans, combining rigorous soil science with AI enabled insights pooled from users' knowledge, to tens of thousands of farms across England. SAIL represents a pioneering effort to improve soil management practices, aligning with the competition's focus on data-driven decision-making and automation. By harnessing the power of AI, we aim to save farmers time, open up new subsidy payments, and improve how England's soils are managed.

To improve margins for wheat production and reduce nitrogen losses to the environment, Salle Farms seeks ways to improve N use efficiency from the current level of 60%. Soils are highly heterogenous, which often causes yields on some areas to be water- not N-limited. Current methods of variable rate N application (VRNA) are based on estimates of spatial variation in the N status of the crop, but cannot predict the yield response to N. We aim to test a new method that utilises cropping system models to determine economically and environmentally optimum N management strategies, which account for crop-soil interactions within each spatially-defined management zone. **Objective 1 Delineate management zones (MZ) within target fields** Using geostatistical clustering techniques on existing spatial yield and soil electrical conductivity data sets, identify homogeneous MZs across on Salle Farms. A subset of 10-12 fields will be selected for model parameterisation and evaluation. **Objective 2 Collect soil data to parameterise crop model** Sample intact cores to 1 m depth at strategic positions within MZs to determine soil physical characteristics required for the pedotransfer functions for plant available soil water and other physical and chemical properties to parametrise cropping system models for each MZ (Obj 3). **Objective 3 Calculate spatially specific N rates for each MZ** An ensemble of wheat crop simulation models (e.g. DSSAT, APSIM, Sirius) will be parameterised using soil data for each MZ, and run using ~20 years of historic weather for the site. Crop response will be simulated for a range of N input levels to generate season-specific N response curves to derive the economically optimum N rates for each MZ. Models will be validated using Salle's on-farm data from previous N-response trials and in-season measurements. N application rates will also be calculated for each MZ using commercial canopy-based precision N tools, based on measures of canopy greenness using proximal sensing or satellite imagery (e.g. Yara). **Objective 4 Farm-scale tests of VRNA methods** Three methods of N fertilisation will be compared in defined blocks within each MZ, applied at rates calculated according to : 1) economically optimum N rates produced by model simulations; 2) N rates determined by commercial canopy-based precision N tools; 3) flat-rate N. Using combine yields, margins and fertiliser NUE for each method will be calculated and compared across MZ. Measurements across 20-30 management zones will provide sufficient replication for a comprehensive method assessment.

HiveSight is our groundbreaking platform for increased yields and sustainable farming through autonomous crop monitoring, informed decision making and optimised farm management with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The multi-farm networking of HiveSight will be scaled globally, enabling unparalleled continuous learning, improvement and early warnings in agriculture. Implementing HiveSight will substantially increase profit through more selective and efficient use of pesticides, fertiliser, labour and fuel, whilst delivering greater yields. HiveSight will be a key driver in farmers' shift to net zero and promote eco-friendly and sustainable farming.

Berries are an important part of our diets, contributing a variety of antioxidants, vitamins and fibre. The UK berry production contributed £633M to the economy in 2021\. Increasingly aggressive pests and diseases challenge growers, with aphid infestations attacking crops growing under tunnels and glass, and even in vertical farming environments where chemical usage can be even less effective and presents threats to workers. Recent withdrawal of several chemical pesticides has accelerated the demand for new pest management solutions. UK fruit growers are being driven towards more sustainable solutions for pest control by legislation and public attitudes that demand more environmentally friendly solutions that minimise residues on fruit and address biodiversity gains that reverse the decline in insects. Use of parasitoid wasps supported by the few approved pesticides provides unreliable or short-term solutions, especially as the plant canopy density increases. Other biologicals such as lacewing and ladybird larvae releases are less mobile, labour intensive to deploy, and difficult to target at areas of infestation. Olombria has expertise in the use of hoverflies as an integrated pollination solution for fruit. Hoverflies adults are highly mobile and can be encouraged using attractants and other cues to seek out and lay eggs in aphid colonies, even in dense foliage. Their larvae are voracious predators, consuming many hundreds of aphids during their short life. With automated monitoring of predators and the use of natural lures to target location and behaviour, this would eliminate the costs of 'spot-treating' colonies with less mobile biological controls. This project will test and develop bespoke UK native hoverfly species blends to control a range of aphid species that damage berry crops grown under protection. New Machine-Learning Vision-Systems and active lures will be developed to adapt targeting of hoverflies at a much earlier stage of infestation.

Verdant Carbon Ltd, a start-up soil carbon measuring service, and NIAB are partnering together to explore the potential for a novel testing methodology for determining soil biological health. We are supported by UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) with their national soil bank and Ceres Rural agronomists. The test will reliably assess the abundance and functionality of soil microbial communities, and relay that information to the landowner in a simple-to-understand metric. We aim to also measure the health of soil nutrient (carbon and nitrogen) cycling functions, to further support environmentally positive farming.

The main objective of SPIN-FERT is to integrate optimised and validated innovations in soil management practices and improve peat-free substrates to enhance soil health in vegetable, fruit and ornamental crops. SPIN-FERT will exploit outcomes, including patents, from several related projects, in particular EXCALIBUR as 6 of its members are partners in SPIN-FERT. Multi-actor approach is at the core of SPIN-FERT methodology and consortium for extensive knowledge transfer and co-design. Specifically, SPIN-FERT will optimize the production process of chosen fertilising products and improve their formulation with innovative protocols to increase efficacy. SPIN-FERT will leverage agro-food by-productsinto resourcesfor agricultural production, exploiting them further into peat-free substrates. These and reconditioned coir will be formulated with specifically selected microbial strains to improve their characteristics and applicability, particularly for nursery industry. All innovative products will be validated in field trials in 4 regions in Europe (PL, I, Fand UK). Five tools will be delivered to support the correct implementation of the practices, to facilitate products registration and favoring policy development, including a Soil Holistic Quality Index. SPIN-FERT will carry out economic, social and environmental assessments of the peat-free substrates and soil management innovations, to demonstrate sustainability. All this information will serve to develop a comprehensive policy framework for measures fostering wide adoption of soil-friendly practices. To further ensure commercial relevance of the peat-free substrates and soil management innovations, SMEs, public authorities and citizen representatives partner or advise on SPIN-FERT for effective project delivery and maximum impact. Art & science and image-based tools will be utilized in communication and dissemination to increase awareness on the central role of soil health for humans and planet living.

Deep Planet aims to detect and predict downy mildew, powdery mildew and botrytis diseases in wine grape plants in the UK by leveraging satellite imagery and machine learning or artificial intelligence. This project is implemented in collaboration with NIAB (Kent), Gusbourne Wine Estates (Kent), Chapel Down Vineyards(Kent), NyeTimber (Kent) and Rathfinny Wine Estates (Sussex) as partners. Our goal is to introduce cost efficient and scalable precision agriculture solutions to wine grape farmers and businesses in the UK to accurately detect, and predict key fungal diseases (botrytis, powdery and downy mildew) and provide a cost effective and reliable solution that can replace inefficient disease detection methods of monitoring with human scouts or with drones.

The vision of the HORIZON-MISS-2023-CLIMA-01-01 call is that Europe’s Regions will be responsible for their sustainable and resilient adaptation to climate change (CC), by developing Roadmaps for adaptation of agriculture to CC. These roadmaps will need to empower regional stakeholders to innovate new, nature-based solutions that meet society’s needs for CC adaptation through better planning that is compatible with national and international policy. TRANSFORM proposes that innovating new crop rotations – the sequences of crops that farmers use to achieve their farming goals – will deliver nature-based solutions for sustainable and resilient CC adaptation in arable and mixed farming. Working in the Atlantic Biogeographic Region (Bio-region) of Europe, we adopt an explicitly multi-actor approach in which stakeholders are in charge of the innovation. TRANSFORM will co-create with stakeholders tools and methods: for Regional-level Roadmaps that describe the needs for adaptation of local people in agriculture; for farmers to innovate crop rotations for their region using the Future Rotations Explorer tool; and, a Toolbox of spatio-temporal methods and tools for stakeholders to explore and evaluate the societal, economic and environmental indicators of impact of rotations. When embedded within our social science methods, these methods and tools will leverage an iterative ‘pipeline to innovation’ for CC adaptation in agriculture that produces lists of acceptable crop rotations, and maps for planning, across the Atlantic Bio-region, and ultimately the whole of Europe. This will allow the European Commission, EU Member States and associated countries and their regions and stakeholders to make progress in attaining the goals of the EU Mission: Adaptation to Climate Change.

Saga Robotics (SR) in collaboration with the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) are trialling and validating an innovative approach to pest control in commercial strawberry farms across Kent. This project represents the first-ever deployment of SR's fully modular mite dispersal system during the strawberry growing season. Central to this project is the introduction of an innovative dual-function technology by SR. Our state-of-the-art robotic platform (Thorvald 3) will now be equipped to simultaneously dispense predatory mites while administering UVC treatment to crops. This dual-function capability is a major step forward, enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of our existing robotic operations. The integration of mite dispersal with UVC treatment offers a more holistic approach to crop management, promising to improve the health and yield of strawberry crops significantly. The commercial level trials of this technology presents a unique opportunity for SR to assess its impact not only on our robotic operations but also on broader farming practices. The project facilitates real-world testing and allows for iterative design improvements, ensuring the system's performance is optimised for commercial use. By closely monitoring and evaluating the technology's effectiveness in actual farming conditions, SR aims to refine and perfect this innovative approach to pest control. Our partnership with NIAB is instrumental in this venture. Leveraging NIAB's vast expertise in agricultural research, especially in the realm of entomology and Integrated Pest Management (IPM), this project involves comprehensive assessments of the effectiveness of the dual-function system. NIAB's role extends to evaluating how the combination of UVC treatment and mite dispersal affects the life cycle and population dynamics of the predatory mites, an essential factor in ensuring the success of this biological control method. Additionally, comparisons will be made between the effectiveness of robotic and manual methods of insect distribution, providing valuable insights into the advantages of automated pest control. This project not only represents a technological leap in agricultural robotics but also aligns with the broader goals of sustainable and efficient farming. By introducing innovative solutions to pest control challenges, SR and NIAB are at the forefront of enhancing the productivity and sustainability of the UK's strawberry farming industry. The successful completion of this project has the potential to set a new standard in agricultural practices, benefiting growers in Kent and beyond.

Thrips pose a significant threat to the UK's horticultural industry, particularly impacting high-value crops like strawberries, which contribute over £377 million to the economy annually. The economic toll of thrips on strawberry cultivation ranges from 10% to 15% (not including non-native invasive species), resulting in staggering financial losses of £37-56M per year. With economic losses exceeding £37M, the need for effective thrips management is critical. The primary culprit, Western flower thrips (_Frankliniella occidentalis_), has developed resistance to chemical pesticides, prompting a shift towards Integrated Pest Management (IPM) with a focus on biological control agents. However, non-native invasive species further threaten fruit production, e.g. Japanese flower thrips (_Thrips setosus_) and Chilli thrips (_Scirtothrips dorsalis_), as highlighted in a recent NIAB-led AHDB project SF 156\. In addition, the presence of other thrips species (e.g. Rose thrips, Rubus thrips, Onion thrips, and Flower thrips), is causing substantial damage but requiring different management approaches to WFT. Accurately identifying species in a mix of thrips is challenging due to their small size, small physical variations, and differences within the same species. The ability to identify current species and recognise invasive thrips in this mix is currently negligible. To address this challenge, our project aims to revolutionise thrips identification by developing rapid and accessible molecular detection tools. Leveraging sensitive molecular techniques and isothermal methods, will create in-field tests for thrips that do not require specialised skills for interpretation. By initially focusing on WFT as a proof of principle, we lay the foundation for a broader initiative aimed at identifying multiple species. Our objectives are to; 1) develop an in-field test for WFT that is user-friendly and rapid. This test will eliminate the need for specialised skills, allowing farmers and agronomists to make informed decisions on pest management strategies. 2) develop the data as a proof-of-principle for similar tests for native and non-native thrips species detection. This will serve as a critical step toward larger follow-on projects and industry collaborations addressing the diverse spectrum of strawberry thrips and enabling the detection of non-native thrips that could disrupt current thrips management strategies. Our project will provide a breakthrough in thrips management, enabling precise and timely interventions. This advancement will safeguard the economic interests of strawberry farmers and contribute to sustainable and responsible pest management practices in the UK horticultural sector.

Fibe are the first to extract cotton-like fibres from potato harvest waste. Since this feedstock has never been valorised, R&D needs to happen from the ground up. This project lays the foundations for the logistics of potato stem harvesting and advises what farms to begin operations for optimal fibre quality, scale and cost.

UK strawberry and raspberry growers produced 119 and 16KT of fruit, respectively, in 2022, worth £506M (DefraStats), but production/ha must further increase to reduce reliance on imports (59 and 27KT, worth £383M in 2022). Continued growth is needed to displace these often-inferior imports, but this must be achieved on a sustainable basis through efficient utilisation of valuable resources (primarily water and inorganic fertilisers) with minimal environmental impact. Soft fruit growers know that a sub-optimal supply of macro- and micro-nutrients will limit marketable yields and berry quality, but most guidelines on fertiliser inputs are very outdated, and there is little scientific basis to current practices which often wastes water, lowers berry firmness, flavour, and shelf-life, and poses a risk to local groundwater quality. Furthermore, excessive Nitrogen input increases N2O emissions as a result of denitrification. N2O emissions account for ca. 44% (global warming potential \[GWP\] basis) of the total agriculture-related GHG emissions. CO2 has a GWP value of 1 while that of N2O is 298, making the latter a more potent GHG. Reducing Nitrogen inputs in agriculture and horticulture by more closely matching demand with supply will help to reduce N2O emissions, but this is a risky strategy without reliable guidelines and monitoring technologies. Our nutrient demand modelling work in IUK102124 showed that N input to substrate-grown raspberry could be reduced by 32% without affecting marketable yields and berry quality, and overall water and fertiliser demand was lowered by 20% due to a reduction in plant biomass (less luxuriant growth). In follow-up feasibility project IUK51135, we developed a prototype hand-held, real-time sensor that growers can use to determine N and K availabilities to inform fertigation decision-making. A prototype phosphorus sensor was also developed in 51135\. Here, we propose to combine novel and existing technologies with plant environmental sciences, new mathematical inputs, novel software and algorithms, and expert commercial soft fruit growing to develop and commercialise data-driven precision fertigation strategies that will support full cropping potential whilst optimising resource use, increasing crop resilience, and lowering emissions. We have assembled a multi-disciplinary and collaborative consortium led by EDT directION (agri-tech sensor manufacturer), with Netafim UK (global irrigation/fertigation company), New Farm Produce (a leading, innovations-driven soft fruit business), and NIAB (the largest UK research institute conducting applied research in horticulture). We have a strong track record of delivering results and commercialising outputs from IUK grants.

The agricultural industry is undergoing a transformative revolution, leveraging new technologies and knowledge to increase yields while dramatically reducing environmental impacts, lowering production costs, and reducing waste. Plants have evolved many capabilities to detect and respond to stress long before visible symptoms appear, yet current agronomic methods rely predominantly on skilled humans detecting these issues once they become visible. A tool that can tap into early plant stress response mechanisms will provide an invaluable source of agronomic knowledge informing growers, agronomists, or automated systems to apply interventions earlier, thereby minimising yield losses and maximising efficiency. Plant electrophysiology is a unique approach to capturing plant-scale stress-related information. It has demonstrated promise in controlled environment agriculture, but its applicability to outdoor farming requires investigation. To make this technology widely adoptable, current electrophysiology sensors need adaptation to field conditions, including: miniaturisation to increase spatial finesse and crop attachment, ergonomic design to aid farmer acceptance, radio-frequency data communication and solar charging capacities for independence, and integration into digital agronomy systems to deliver precision control and value for the growers. To develop the next generation of plant electrophysiological sensors (NGES), we have assembled a multidisciplinary and collaborative team in the UK. The project will be led by Benchmark Control, an electrical engineering and product development firm that has expertise in sensor fabrication; Adrian Scripps is a premier grower and distributor of UK fruit with a forward-thinking approach to sustainability that will provide orchard infrastructure for NGES testing; Hutchinsons is a leading agronomic consulting firm at the forefront of developing digital farming platforms that will integrate NGES outputs into a user-friendly strategic plan; and NIAB, the largest UK research institute conducting applied research in horticulture will conduct the NGES orchard experiments and provide project management support. Our research and development approach enables multiple rounds of NGES design and refinement, performance comparison to currently existing sensors, controlled trials of stress detection in orchard trees, and integration into existing digital farming platforms. After successful completion of these tasks, our NGES will be directly marketable to growers of high-value perennial crops, such as apples, grapes, nuts, and citrus. In the UK, adoption of NGES will reduce costs by avoiding the application of unnecessary crop protection agents or nutritional supplements and increase profits by maximising yield potentials. Ultimately, our radical approach to capturing plant-based information will help transform the agricultural sector into the sustainable version our society and environment needs.

Over the past decade the industry has seen growth in the beer sector with hundreds of "micro-breweries" that demand hops with new, high-impact aroma profiles. Consequently, the development of cultivars with unique aromas has become the focal point of breeding programmes. The success of a new hop variety is not only measured in its brewing qualities. Growers must also be able to grow hops to a profitable standard meaning that a variety must be highly resilient to biotic and abiotic stresses and produce a stable crop over multiple years, amidst conditions of extreme temperatures and low water supply. Thus, hop breeders today are tasked with combining a multitude of desirable traits into a superior hop variety. Hop breeding is currently achieved through studying the plants' traits, such as crop yield, disease resistances and aroma. Selection of favourable breeding lines based on physical trait expression is both time and labour consuming. Screening for Verticillium wilt resistance, for example, requires the infection of clonally propagated, mature hops, while assessing environmental stability requires repeated measurements of multiple plants in different locations over multiple years. Trait selection comes with several inherent problems. Plant traits can be influenced by both genetic and random factors, however, plant breeders can only improve upon the variation that is controlled by genetic factors. Identifying DNA that control traits of interest and then selecting individuals with desirable DNA could bypass the trait observation based selection methods. Thus, by embracing genomic informed breeding tools, a breeding company can gain a competitive advantage in the industry, as it allows them to breed better crops faster. Wye Hops holds a diverse collection of breeding lines displaying variation in resistance to Verticillium wilt and many additional traits, however, the causative genetic components are waiting to be identified, characterised and exploited. Here, we will generate genetic data for all varieties in the collection and use this information to identify genetic regions that control plant resilience. We can then screen individuals for desirable DNA and pyramid multiple resilient traits into high quality hop varieties. This project will provide an environmentally friendly and natural breeding solution to environmental challenges in hop. Through this project, we have the ability to produce environmentally adapted hop varieties with improved agronomy and brewing qualities leading to a direct benefit for UK hop growers.

Spotted wing drosophila (SWD) is the number one invasive pest species damaging soft fruit crops worldwide. Without intervention, crop losses can reach 90%. Current control is very reliant on conventional pesticides which, in the UK, are sought through increasingly difficult emergency approvals every year. Sterile insect technique (SIT) uses the regular release of sterile males of a pest to mate with females which results in no offspring. SIT is species-specific and non-toxic, so protects biodiversity. Zyzzle has automated sterile male SWD production using robotics and artificial intelligence; these flies are non-GM and already approved for commercial sale. The initial Stop-Spot project, which was a successful collaboration between Zyzzle, NIAB and Berry Gardens Growers, provided several useful results that helped shape the SIT service to control SWD in strawberry and raspberry crops. The project's laboratory phase guided Zyzzle in the development of its sterile male production processes, including radiation dose optimization and recovery intervals to ensure the fitness of sterile males before release. The field studies, including data on dispersal and longevity in these crops, gave critical insights on release rates. Analysing the year-round population dynamics of wild SWD and studying the mating competitiveness of winter morph SWD, validated current strategies for timing and location of sterile male releases. This project will focus on blackberries, a particularly challenging crop for SWD control. AHDB data shows growers can invest \>£11,000/ha just to control SWD on blackberries, which is at least 60% more than for other vulnerable crops. This reflects the difficulty of managing SWD in blackberries, due to the long susceptible ripening period of the berries; also, dense foliage creates a microclimate conducive to SWD development and hampers effective crop sanitation. This project will for the first time quantify SIT efficacy compared to untreated control in blackberry. Furthermore, it will use detailed field data to produce a predictive model for SWD populations; this could transform targeting of sterile male releases, which is currently done using backward-looking trap data. The project will also research sterile male performance and the changing vulnerability of ripening blackberries to SWD. Together, these innovations will advance sustainable pest management in blackberries. A successful solution for SWD control in blackberries will protect and improve the incomes of growers in England, while enhancing sustainability. By optimizing SIT protocols in blackberry, including through better prediction of wild SIT population dynamics, we will improve efficiency and reduce the risk of treatment failure.

Globally, 80% of commercial soft fruit can be lost as waste due to damage caused by an invasive fruit fly, spotted wing drosophila (SWD). Growers rely on full field sprays of chemical insecticides to protect fruit from SWD, costing £11bn. Recently strawberry growers have also recorded increasing incidence of damage from earwigs with crop losses of 10-30% at peak times in strawberry crops: currently there are no effective control measures for this insect in strawberry crops, even though earwigs are actually beneficial in apple orchards, feeding on a variety of insect pests such as aphids. For apple growers, rosy apple aphid (RAA) is a major pest causing significant yield and quality losses. RAA damage is exacerbated by the presence of ants in the trees in the spring which tend the aphids for their honeydew. These ants protect their valuable 'aphid farms' from predation by generalist insect predators like hoverfly larvae and ladybirds. We have identified a bait made from a natural product which SWD feeds on (ProBandz) and in combination with low doses of insecticide can be used to control this pest using less than 95% of insecticide that is normally sprayed to protect crops. In this project we will test our new bait, ProBandz, in combination with low doses of alternative insecticides, thereby reducing the risk of SWD insecticide resistance simultaneously reducing levels of residues in the fruit. We will develop a more targeted and less environmentally damaging approach to SWD control. In strawberry crops we will live trap earwigs using a combination of formulated bait and escape proof traps. Earwigs can be later released into apple orchards as a pest control agent creating a sustainable approach. To accomplish RAA control, we will use a formulated ProBandz to attract feeding ants away from the aphid colonies, making the aphids more vulnerable to attack from natural enemies, resulting in fewer aphid damaged fruits.

This project aims to develop a proof of concept, cost-effective, and easy-to-use mobile imaging application that uses artificial intelligence (AI) modelling to accurately diagnose early onset foliar disease symptoms in wheat and oilseed rape crops. We will develop new technology that provides unprecedented levels of disease diagnosis accuracy by using various crop-specific parameters to train the AI models and find new patterns. To do this, we make use of NIAB's research facilities and expertise to collect extensive datasets across a wide range of trials. This includes crops grown under controlled conditions and those inoculated with specific diseases. Farmers and growers will be able to use the tool to rapidly and accurately diagnose diseases, allowing them to take early intervention to stop the pathogen from spreading. This will result in higher crop yields and reduce the amount of fungicide needed. We will also develop a scoring system that allows the user to receive a rating for the disease identified. This will provide scientific users (breeders and researchers) with data that can be used to quantify assessments, enhancing their ability to identify the most disease resistant lines and varieties. Early and timely detection of foliar pathogens provides growers with greater time to intervene, reducing the risk of losses to yield and quality, and reducing the likelihood further sprays will be required to control the outbreak. More accurate detection and diagnosis could help to prevent growers from applying fungicides unnecessarily, helping to reduce chemical use, improving sustainability, and reducing risks of fungicide resistance development. The ability to score disease ratings would also improve breeders' ability to select the most disease resistant breeding lines, thus improving overall crop resilience.

Current tree fruit production applies crop management products uniformly across each orchard, however, orchards exhibit substantial variation across them and between trees. Even neighbouring trees have very different growth and crop loads. Treating all trees uniformly regardless of their size, density, crop load, or health limits yield, is inefficient, and detrimental to the orchard productivity and the environment. This project will develop a Precision Variable Rate Spray (PVRS) machine, control software system, and new systems for measuring and assessing each individual trees' status. These components will be combined into products and services that will transform the tree fruit industry and deliver new levels of environmentally sustainable crop production, increasing efficiency and yield whilst lowering costs and environmental impacts. Integral to this approach is that every individual tree in the orchard will be assessed, its requirements calculated, and then treated with a tailored quantity of crop management products. This will reduce wastage and improve yields. Led by one of the UK's leading and forward-thinking agronomy companies, this project includes a range of high quality growers, a large top fruit marketing organisation, a software engineering company specialising in global positioning systems, a top fruit digital agronomy company, a crop phenotyping specialist, a robotics company, a horticultural engineering company, the UK's agricultural chemical regulation organisation, and three academic institutions specialising in agricultural engineering and robotics, computer science, economics, and horticultural agronomy. Working closely across the tree fruit industry's production chain ensures that the products and services developed during the project are designed for the grower and meet their requirements. The consortium's network allows us to engage with the wider fruit industry. The project will showcase the products and services to the horticulture sector with a range of knowledge exchange activities and field demonstrations. During the project we will assess the new spray system's benefits relative to conventional spraying, and report on the economic and environmental advantages of investing in Precision Variable Rate Spraying. At the end of the project, UK growers will have access to the most advanced and efficient tree fruit crop management system available, and understand the environmental and economic benefits of using the system.

Food production depends on crops grown in fields, glasshouses and gardens and all growers use some form of fertilisers or "plant foods". Fertilisers containing Nitrogen can be manufactured by passing air through a large, continuous electric arc (the high temperature forces the Nitrogen in the air to react with the Oxygen so that the Nitrogen can then be used as a fertiliser) - it takes enormous amounts of electricity which, currently at least, is made by burning fossilised fuels. There is another problem with these manufactured fertilisers such as ammonium nitrate and urea (the mostly widely used in the UK) and that is that they are water soluble and 30 to 50 % are likely to be lost to groundwater. That is a financial loss and a pollution risk. Many plastics contain Nitrogen, originally sourced from air the same way. Up-cycling these plastics at end-of-life of original use can re-use that Nitrogen without incurring the original energy consumption. Initial investigations have shown that one such source contains 22% Nitrogen and that it is, when incorporated into the soil, released to the crop without loss to groundwater. This is an organic, bio-release by the soil fungi. Initial field trials have shown that the material must be ground up and then could be pelleted in order to handle it but that the pellet must break down rapidly as soon as it gets into the soil. So, the first step is to investigate pelleting the material and to do so within the context of application to the soil . That application method, for many other reasons including energy use and the increasingly narrow weather windows to planting a crop (because of climate change), will be by direct drilling. The summary plan, then, is to develop a pellet that will stand handling and passage through a selection of common direct drills, to be applied in a measured quantity in a strip just below seed planting depth, and that the pellet breaks down so as to release the Nitrogen content to support crop growth. That growth will be monitored though to harvest . Alongside will be control plots using a conventional mineral fertiliser such as ammonium nitrate.

Strawberries are one of the most commercially important fruit crops in the UK and are good sources of nutrients including vitamin C. Insect pollination is vital to the production of commercial strawberries and is required to ensure a successful and marketable crop. Over or underpollination can lead to low quality and misshapen fruit that is not suitable for sale. Effective pollination can also increase the shelf-life of berries and is likely to influence their nutritional content. This project will further develop acoustic sensors to monitor pollinator activity in strawberry farms. These sensors will identify areas of over/underpollination, which will inform interventions to influence pollinator activity. Growers currently have few options for how to alter pollinator behaviour, therefore as part of this project an attractant/repellent for commercial bumblebee colonies will be developed to influence the foraging of bumblebees over the short-term, especially in young bumblebees. Trials will be done at NIAB to provide data for calibration of sensors with pollinator activity and fruit quality. It will also investigate whether lures affect pollinator activity on a larger scale than initial laboratory trials. Berries will be harvested from these experiments and the fruit quality, nutritional profile and shelf life will be measured to understand the impact of pollinator recruitment to open flowers on these characteristics. This project would have significant benefits for growers, retailers and consumers by: * Improving the nutritional content of strawberries (vitamin C/phenolics/antioxidants) * Increasing marketable yield of strawberries by reducing misshapes associated with under/overpollination * Improving shelf-life of strawberries, reducing in-shop/at-home wastage * Delivering technologies that can be used to improve yield/shelf-life/nutritional-content of other crops reliant on pollination.

**Challenge:**Rice is a staple for nearly half of the world's 7 billion population and is mainly produced in south-east Asia (Mohanty\_2013). As the global population rises, to over nine billion by 2030, there will be huge pressure on land for food -- and rice yields must increase by 25% (Fernandez\_and\_Orth\_2018). However, rice yields are decreasing due to climate change (Zhao\_et\_al\_2017). In addition, rice cultivation accounts for 12% of global methane emissions (World\_Economics\_Forum\_2019), which is 30-times more a potent Green House Gas, than CO2 (National\_Geographic). Today, global rice production is doing as much harm as 1,200 average-sized coal power stations, and by 2030, will be responsible for 6% of total GHG emissions (We\_Forum\_2019). Despite sustained initiatives particularly in China, Japan, Korea and at the International Rice Research institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, established approaches are unable to produce high enough yields, and have effectively plateaued in China, Indonesia, Japan and Korea, and although rising linearly in some key countries such as India and Vietnam, the rates of increase are too slow to meet demand (Grassini\_and\_Cassman\_2013). **Solution:** This 24-month industrial research project between NIAB and Tropic advances the state-of-the-art in a plant product (rice) and it's production system (gene editing to increase rice yield), creating a unique UK technology and product export opportunity, and significantly contributes to Net Zero (reducing emissions from rice cultivation), demonstrated through glasshouse trials initially with field performance confirmation latterly (TRL7). We have already demonstrated that we can gene edit favourable traits into a variety of crops (e.g., disease resistant bananas and rice). We will use our previous know-how to build this novel production system, including technical work, utilising Knock-Down and Knock-Out gene editing to modify yield-related regions of interest in rice and select the best rice lines. By the end of this project, we will be in a position then utilise our patented 'GEiGS' technology to create non-GMO rice in several rice varieties, which we will then commercialise. Impact: Increasing rice yield, has the potential to massively cut GHG emissions, whilst producing more grain, and thus keeping the land-mass utilised constant. We have predicted that higher yielding rice could lead to a total CO2 reduction for rain-fed rice of 730 Kg CO2/ha, and for irrigated rice 1330 Kg CO2/ha. **_If everyone globally were to consume Tropic's rice, this could equate to savings of 433 million tonnes of CO2 annually_.**

This project is a demonstration of feasibility for a sustainable food ingredient production platform in crops beginning with bovine-identical proteins for the rapidly growing alternative meat industry. By enabling the production of identical meat proteins entirely produced within the biomass of plants, and designed and produced to enhance the taste, nutritional benefits and quality of existing plant-based offerings, we enable wider adoption of products that directly contribute to bettering of our climate emergency. Moreover, we are demonstrating an entirely new production platform and ecosystem, ultimately powered by photosynthesis, directly addressing the future of agricultural production and the alternative meat industry

Ensuring food and nutrition security has been a constant struggle throughout human history, but perhaps never more so than now with a rapidly increasing global population (estimated to reach 9.7bn by 2050), the current challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and more locally, the legacy effects of BREXIT. Traditional production methods will be unable to meet these challenges, and so new innovation and technologies must be developed to provide food security worldwide - one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG2). New ways of growing fresh, nutritious, food with an assured shelf-life using fewer inputs and from a smaller area, and in more sustainable and cost-effective ways which circumvent limiting factors such as climate, land-use pressure, and inflationary costs are needed. Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) is a promising method of growing plants that is not coupled with weather or land, and could contribute to long-term resilience and self-sufficiency targets. The global vertical farming technology market is valued at £3.12bn, and is estimated to reach £16.77bn by 2027, 23.28% CAGR (Verified Market Research, 2020). Drivers of this growth are the high yield potentials, year-round production, hyper-local production, reduced food-miles and storage requirements, shorter supply chain, use of less water and fertilisers, and minimum agrochemicals. While most vertical farming companies grow leafy greens and salads, there is an opportunity to utilise this technology for other high value horticultural crops such as berries and transplants, larger vegetables and root crops, and plant-based pharmaceuticals and proteins. We will develop a method to produce high quality, virus-and disease-free strawberry plant propagules with assured high cropping potential in TCEA. The resulting pre-programmed, high-health plant material will enable import substitution of both propagules and fruit (currently £40m and £186M per year), reduce chemical inputs and waste (currently £30m/year), and deliver a product that will provide value and security for growers, when planted in conventional polytunnel systems, glasshouses (CEA) or TCEA. To achieve these outputs, we have assembled a multi-disciplinary and collaborative consortium led by Vertical Future (a leading vertical farming technology and research company) with NIAB East Malling (the largest UK research institute conducting applied research in horticulture), the University of Reading, leading strawberry growers Hugh Lowe Farms and Clock House Farm, and their propagation companies (Blaise Plants and Linton Growing, respectively), the leading UK marketing desk Berry Gardens Growers Ltd, Delta-T Devices (agri-tech sensor manufacturer) and Cocogreen (specialist substrate supplier).

Access to new apple varieties is crucial for the future sustainability of the UK apple industry, as new varieties tend to have a significantly higher retail value and therefore offer larger margins for apple growers. However, many of the new cultivars introduced to the UK market are susceptible to apple scab (_Venturia inequalis_), powdery mildew (_Podosphaera leucotricha_) or European canker (_Neonectria ditissima_), three apple diseases that are highly prevalent in the UK. This has led to a heavy reliance on chemical disease control. Monogenic resistance to powdery mildew and scab are well-documented and the use of the scab resistance gene _Rvi6_ has successfully been incorporated in breeding programmes worldwide. In contrast, the documented resistances to European canker are polygenic and have been poorly deployed in apple breeding. There is thus a lack of cultivars with combined resistance to all three diseases and a heavy reliance on a single resistance gene against scab in commercial cultivars. Breeding apples with improved resistance is a long process, traditionally taking 20-25 years. Such timescales leaves the apple industry vulnerable to the emergence of new biotic and abiotic threats and to the availability of effective plant protection products. This project aims to develop modern breeding methods to enable a shorter breeding cycle of apple and ensure a faster route to market for new, more resistant cultivars. The project will research three breeding methods and their potential to shorten the breeding cycle: genomic selection, molecular marker-trait associations and speed breeding. Genomic selection is a form of marker-assisted selection in which markers covering the whole genome are utilised for selection. This breeding method has revolutionised animal and plant breeding and is particularly useful for highly polygenic traits. Nevertheless, genomic selection has not been widely adopted in apple breeding and there are no reports of it's efficacy as a selection tool for polygenic disease resistance in apple. Within this project we will evaluate genomic prediction models for resistance to European canker, an essential trait for UK production. Speed breeding is a tool in which environmental growth conditions are manipulated to accelerate plant development, thereby allowing for rapid generation cycling. Integrated with marker-based selection methods, this methodology has great potential to produce multi-resistant apple cultivars which meet industry and consumer demand in a significantly reduced time-frame. We will use a combination of photoperiod regime, plant hormones and growth regulators to manipulate the plant development and seed dormancy in apple.

The raspberry industry in Kent and Medway uniquely comprises the whole value chain, from breeding through to production and sales, and the allied industries that support it. This project aims to increase the resilience of the UK raspberry industry, by developing sustainable novel propagation methods. Currently the demand for propagated raspberry material outstrips supply, especially for popular new varieties such as 'Malling Bella'. Efficient quality raspberry production is highly dependent on healthy, vigorous planting material produced by specialist propagators to high health standards. Much of the current material required is imported from the EU and all plant material requires certification and requires constant replacement. This issue is heightened with rising energy and fuel costs along with post-Brexit imports becoming more costly and complicated, leading to strain on UK Raspberry production and the wider UK fruit industry. Raspberry propagation is currently costly and inefficient requiring innovative strategies to develop a sustainable approach to secure the future of the industry. The main threat to raspberry production in the UK is the quality and quantity of canes produced and the plant survival rate. In this project we will develop a sustainable and integrated management strategy, incorporating the use of commercially available beneficial microorganisms into current propagation practise. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) have been shown to aid the establishment and survivability of plants whilst reducing the inputs needed for production. Our previous research suggests that AMF increases establishment when incorporated into soft fruit propagation and fungi remain active after the cold storage process preceding planting in the production site. Beneficial microbes will be incorporated into the key stages of raspberry propagation to improve the survivability, growth and yield of plants. The project will address the challenge to produce consistent healthy disease-free 'Malling Bella' raspberry plants whilst re-using coir substrates with enhanced microbial diversity, consequently increasing production success and market access for growers of this and other Malling varieties, in K&M, the UK and beyond.

Superior varieties are crucial for sustainable strawberry production in the UK. Production costs have increased far more than the price of the fruit produced, meaning new varieties must be cheaper and easier to grow to keep their production profitable. Plant architecture (the way the strawberry plant grows), including how many leaves the plant produces, how the leaves are positioned and how the fruit and flowers are displayed, is critical for profitable production. Plant architecture has important effects on how many berries are produced and how sweet those berries are. It also affects how easily plants will get diseased or infested with pests (the denser the canopy, the worse), and it affects how easily pickers can access the fruit, with very bushy plants making picking berries much slower. It has been estimated that plants with well-balanced architecture could reduce production costs by more than 10%, making production significantly more profitable and saving an estimated £20 million across the whole of the UK every year. Plant breeders have therefore tried to breed new varieties with good plant architecture, but the process is difficult because the traits are complex. This project will aim to develop molecular markers to help breed new strawberry varieties. It will use cutting edge machine-learning technologies to capture data on plant architecture and use this, along with information about the DNA of the strawberry plants to develop tools to breed strawberries with better plant architecture in a classical way (without the use of GM technology). The project outcomes will lead to the development of superior, more sustainable strawberry varieties for the UK that will keep the growers profitable.

Fibe is conducting a feasibility study in partnership with NIAB into the viability of biological processing to improve the quality and consistency of bio-based and chemical-free green-waste from potatoes.

This project develops an integrated, digital crop management approach for the early detection of glasshouse pests and diseases, utilising the latest diagnostic technology and agronomic knowledge in a commercial production setting. The objective is to co-develop a crop scouting service, informed by spectral diagnostics that can detect the early establishment of yield impacting events, and integrate directly with agronomic input providers. Substantial losses can be prevented through early curative action, improving conventional and biological control efficacy. The work will catalyse grower, agronomy, technology and plant science advancements to progress the envelope of digital agronomy services and sustainable glasshouse production. The change of scope proposed is for the agronomy partner to no longer supply the digital platform and move from the market exploitation focal point to a reseller and data user of a reviewed platform. The project will then focus on the diagnostics and redirect what is left of the agronomy platform resources into integrating with existing market leaders of farm management platforms (SourceAG, Koppert IPM - both currently used by the growers in the consortium). Fargro will remain as a champion of the technology, an independent trials assessor and provide crop walk support for commercial trials. The project deliverables in respect of the digital platform will be limited to the MVP of the Grofar App, which was delivered earlier in the project.

Raspberry is a popular and high-value soft fruit in the UK. However, current production is hampered by aphid infestation, mainly attributed to the large raspberry aphid (_Amphorophora idaei_). Controlling this aphid was historically done by breeding aphid-resistant raspberry cultivars and spraying pesticides. However, these methods are no longer adequate for several reasons. First, aphid biotypes able to withstand genes bred into raspberry began to emerge. Additionally, breeding for aphids for resistance is no longer a priority due to fewer concerns about the viruses that aphids spread. Secondly, the withdrawal of approvals for pesticides has limited the options for control. Control of aphids is now anchored on integrated pest management strategies that depend on the use of effective commercially produced biocontrol products such as parasitoids and generalist predators. However, research has not been done to align the effectiveness of different biocontrol components into a cohesive integrated biocontrol program to protect raspberry crops from aphids. Consequently, there are losses to production, wastage of unmarketable fruit and inefficient resource use in raspberry. Commercial losses of even 10% to this £147M/year industry would translate to over £14M losses, an unacceptably high sum given that the UK imports more than 69% of raspberries consumed locally. This project will leverage the expertise of grower organisations, NIAB scientists and a leading biocontrol producer to develop and test an integrated biocontrol program for aphid control in raspberry. The overall aim is to incorporate different biocontrol components into a season-long program that is responsive to the seasonal changes in the plant and aphids. Additionally, the research consortium will conduct a cost-benefit analysis to ensure that adequate control maintains the market competitiveness of locally produced raspberries. Furthermore, this research will provide valuable information and data for future research to create biocontrol programs for other soft fruit in the UK.

The Hemp Excellence Project is a collaboration between farmers, research and industry to enhance the knowledge base for hemp cultivation to help open up new opportunities for farmers to grow this sustainable crop. Industrial hemp, cannabis with a low level of the psychoactive compound THC, has seen a global upsurge in interest in the last decade. It has thousands of uses, with applications for all parts of the plant. These include food, construction, textiles and bioplastics. The global hemp market is projected to reach $15.26 billion by 2027\. Hemp has huge potential as a financially and environmentally sustainable crop. This makes it highly appealing as farmers look to diversify in the transition from BPS and reduce their carbon footprint. There are three key parts that can be harvested: the seeds for nutritious foods or industrial use, the stem cortex or shiv for building materials, and fibre, for use in fabrics insulation and many other biobased materials. Fibre offers many opportunities for the UK's emerging bio-economy, to replace products manufactured from non-renewable resources. Hemp had been grown in the UK for hundreds of years prior to being abandoned due to drug classification. As a result of this gap in cultivation, grower knowledge and processing infrastructure have become depleted and there has been very little published research on growing in the UK. Farmers are held back by a lack of knowledge and research on: * Agronomy and variety choice for optimal UK-yield * Harvesting methods and equipment * Optimum pre-processing for quality and return to growers The project is being led by a Kentish farming business who will conduct on-farm trials to identify the best ways to grow hemp in a UK agricultural context for quality and yield. They will collaborate with a crop science organisation for research design and analysis of results. A leading footwear brand will provide industry insight to deliver joined up thinking from farm to end user. The Hemp Excellence Project will produce data on hemp establishment, cultivation, harvest and pre-processing which will be compiled into a report. This will set a precedent for on-farm hemp growing research and provide valuable knowledge for existing and aspiring growers. This would give UK farmers more confidence to add this profitable, sustainable crop to their rotation. The know-how developed will contribute to future development of the UK hemp industry such as new processing facilities and market access.

This research project will be led by Overland with support of research partner NIAB East Malling and specialist subcontractors: C. Donkin Limited (agronomy, substrate development), Kelsey Farms (strawberry producer). It will investigate the challenges and assess mitigation strategies required for high-quality, low disease risk, sustainable, recycled growing media from spent coir substrate. The project will also develop, comprehensively evaluate and benchmark recycling and production processes in order to reliably standardise the recycled media's biological, chemical and physical properties. Project outputs will provide soft fruit growers in Kent and Medway and the wider horticultural industry with a reliable coir recycling service including automated removal of spent media, recycling/processing to reduce the risk of pathogens, media formulation/standardisation, bagging and delivery to farm ready for use. Soft fruit growers are under increased consumer pressure to reduce their material and labour costs and produce more affordable and sustainable produce. The market demand for affordable, sustainable, and safe recycled coir media is considerable and growing due to consumer demand, and increased costs of virgin coir material, shipping, and labour prices. Slotting directly into existing soft fruit growing practices, our recycled media will allow growers and farmers based in Kent and Medway to reuse their growing media in a low-cost, low-energy, robust process and replace the existing volatile, expensive, and environmentally inefficient global supply chain thereby delivering an improved product at lower cost as part of a circular, sustainable farming system. The proposed solution will address Net-Zero targets through reducing the energy and emissions of shipping virgin coir (9.7 tonnes CO2eq per ha of production) and the waste produced by single-season growing techniques (~60 000 m3 diseased coir bags disposed in K&M yearly). It will reduce costs, ease the labour burden, increase productivity for soft fruit growers, and create a local recycling media production sector to supply UK horticulture with environmentally friendly substrates. The use of recycled coir over virgin will significantly reduce the waste generated, the amount of coir imported, the waste management required, and the energy/carbon footprint of shipping of virgin material.

This project will establish a **Centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping** (**CH Cx3**). The diverse team will work together on a selected set of four crop groups (already known to be associated with high carbon-capture potential). The team will ensure Project outcomes and outputs will be made available to farmers and government via a central knowledge hub dealing with dissemination and outreach. CHCx3 will evaluate and develop the potential for increased carbon (C) capture within UK agriculture by improving these crops' ability to capture and store Carbon-dioxide. In addition to capturing atmospheric Carbon-dioxide from the air and storing it in the soil, we will consider how the crops themselves can be used in production of: new products made from those crops. These include substitutes bricks/breeze blocks, fabrics and chip-board. Energy-crops substitute for gas/oil. In short, replacing non-renewable, carbon-intensive production materials where possible. Diversifying crop species (e.g., hemp and flax in sustainable building materials) and crops to feed livestock production systems (e.g., diverse grass and flower mixtures) has the potential to increase farm resilience, reduce crop inputs and help improve the environment. Addressing climate change goals requires that farmers and industry using and selling crop products (known as value-chains) have confidence in economically viable crop production. strengthening and piloting components of value-chains is a major component of the project. We will help farmers to deliver government incentive schemes, such as the 'Environmental Land Management' scheme (ELM) which, through payments, enables farmers to hit targets for broader public good.  CHCx3 brings together businesses, growers, industry-experts and other stakeholders; evaluates economic returns and validates anticipated climate-change mitigation and emissions reductions on-farm and through product-use by discussion, rigorous testing and life cycle analysis. Farmers and other stakeholders will be able to access data from the project through two user friendly Webpage-based 'Apps', one of which is already being developed in a recently funded sister project. Networking, knowledge exchange grower/user interaction and engagement with policy-makers are at the heart of the **CHCx3** hub; continued activity and growth is guaranteed through App development and recruitment of farmers; assisted by national membership groups such as the National Farmers Union, FarmED, NIAB and the British, Northern-Irish and Scottish Hemp Associations. Breeding work will continue too following completion The main 'Green House Gas (GHG) emission considered is carbon-dioxide, but a second key GHG will be reduced through reduced use of nitrogen-based fertilisers; namely nitrous-oxide emissions; this will also be quantified.

The NFU has set the bold target of UK agriculture becoming a net-zero industry by 2040\. For the arable sector, this will necessitate changes both to the crops which are grown and the approaches taken to growing them. Legume crops will be central to this: they fix atmospheric nitrogen, thus reducing the high greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and application of nitrogen fertiliser. They can also service growing consumer demand for plant-based protein, making them uniquely placed to deliver protein nutritional security. Current domestic legume production is dominated by pea and field (faba) bean, but these are not necessarily optimised for human consumption, and there is limited availability of alternatives. The 'Cicero' project will explore one such alternative, chickpea (_Cicer arietinum_), widely used in food manufacturing but currently largely imported from overseas. Chickpea is a key ingredient in familiar Middle Eastern and South Asian foods and has a growing importance as a vegan egg alternative. Whilst there has been some recent domestic chickpea production, this has been on a small-scale, hampered by relatively poorly-adapted overseas varieties and a lack of experience from growers and advisors about how best to grow the crop. Current domestic production represents a tiny fraction of the volume required by the UK food sector, which is dominated by imports from Canada, India and Turkey. Our consortium brings together experts in plant breeding, seed marketing, genetics and agronomy with growers and food processors, representing key parts of the chickpea supply chain. At the heart of 'Cicero' will be an agronomy and variety screening programme to identify how to maximise performance from the best available chickpea varieties for UK growers and end-users. We will also evaluate diverse material carrying novel agronomic characteristics such as cold tolerance, high seedling vigour and Ascochyta blight (disease) resistance, and develop a suite of new variants targeting key adaptation genes. We aim to start transferring this novel variation into the best varieties through an innovative technology-led chickpea breeding programme. This will target earlier spring planting and improved seedling establishment, making the crop more competitive against weeds to give reliable and increased yield. We will integrate these agronomic improvements with key nutritional and functionality targets identified by the food sector. Together this represents a unique opportunity to tailor this valuable nitrogen-fixing break crop to fit both with established UK arable rotations and the technical requirements of food manufacturers.

Grassweeds are one of farming's biggest drains on productivity -- blackgrass alone costs the UK farming industry £0.4bn every year. One of the main reasons is that it has built up resistance to the herbicides on which farmers rely to keep it in check. Problems with other grassweeds are also on the rise as product withdrawals and changing farming practices reduce the choice of weedkillers available to farmers. UK wheat production is now alarmingly reliant on just one herbicide: glyphosate. Farmers are increasingly turning to other means of weed control, but one of the most effective - ploughing down the weed seed to stop it germinating - is expensive in fuel costs, while turning the soil releases huge volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, exacerbating the effect of climate change. One means of controlling weeds spreading is by preventing their seeds falling on the soil. That can be achieved with Harvest weed seed control (HWSC) systems whereby the chaff that comes out the back of the combine harvester, including the weed seed, is passed through a mill to make it unviable. Although these systems have been used in other parts of the world (i.e. Australia, Canada and the US) they are yet to be tested in the UK. This is particularly relevant to regenerative agriculture farmers who don't till the soil, there is also a lack of knowledge on the level of viable weed seed left standing at harvest and therefore if such equipment will be suitable to farmers in the UK. This project aims to test the suitability of HWSC equipment to English farming systems and explore how cultivations can be used with this to double down on tricky weeds. Furthermore, a data collection protocol for use by UK farmers will be designed to produce the benchmark data on weed seed availability at harvest to inform both future research and innovations and to allow farmers to collect data on their own farm to help inform their control decisions.

An innovative mixed farm in Oxfordshire is working with applied researchers to explore whether precision planting of wheat seeds can increase yield, compared to conventional seed drilling in rows. Precision planting will result in more evenly spaced wheat plants, which should reduce competition between plants, improve light capture, and perhaps reduce disease pressure. If this is successful, there is potential for seed planting robots to be developed, which would increase yield and the efficiency of crop production, without negative environmental impacts.

UK berry production contributed £629M to the economy in 2021, increasing income by a third within 10 years. Berry production is also essential for human health as high-value and high-quality fruits provide a range of antioxidants, vitamins and fibre. However, berry production faces challenges in production related to a range of emerging and increasing pests and diseases. The global soft fruit industry suffers significant crop losses from an invasive fruit fly, spotted wing drosophila (SWD). SWD lays eggs in fruit before it is harvested, causing up to 80% crop loss. The potential market in the UK, Europe and USA for SWD control is £11bn. High value crops like strawberry, cherries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries, are reliant on chemical insecticides to protect them from SWD. In previous work, we have already identified a candidate repellent for SWD and a trapping system to remove SWD from fruit crops. In this project we will test a combination of these two approaches in a 'push-pull' strategy; 'pushing' SWD out of the crop and 'pulling' it away from the crop to reduce direct damage to fruits before they are harvested. Our approach is a more targeted and less environmentally damaging method to SWD control. We will first test our push-pull system with two major English fruit growers in commercial strawberry crops and we will begin to test on crops even more attractive to SWD, like raspberry. Reduction in fruit damage by SWD will be quantified and effects on beneficial insects minimised. In parallel work, novel biodegradable formulations of the repellent will be developed, lures in the traps further improved and deployment patterns for both repellent and traps optimised. This push-pull strategy will be a first for this global pest and enable fruit growers to improve productivity cost-effectively and sustainably by reducing insecticide applications and residues in saleable fruit, reducing labour inputs, and contributing to the progression to net zero. The project will be led by Russell IPM, the UK's largest producer of biorational approaches to control of pests and diseases who will exploit this potentially game-changing solution to SWD. Two major English growers, Rumwood Green Farms Ltd. and WB Chambers and Son, will provide facilities and labour for carrying out field trials. Academic partners are NIAB who are world leaders in applied SWD research, and NRI, University of Greenwich, will work with Russell to develop new attractants and repellent formulations.

As with many developed countries the UK's agricultural land is under pressure to provide food to a growing population in the most efficient and sustainable manner. There is an added opportunity and responsibility for countries like the UK to take the lead in developing solutions for the UNSDG's in this case \#2 Zero Hunger. Airborne pathogens infect cereal and horticultural crops reducing the yield per hectare. While their impact can be mitigated by the use of fungicides, these must be used responsibly and sustainably. This project creates a solution comprising several, identical sensing devices located in the field of crops. The data from each sensor provides an early warning of the presence of the pathogen which is turned into a recommended management plan for the farmer/grower. Each device comprises a biosensor that stimulates the targeted pathogen spore to germinate, a smart camera to detect that growth, a set of environmental sensors and a wireless communication module all housed in a weatherproof, robust housing. By combining the data from the sensors over a wide area it is possible to create additional services on top of the service provided to individual farmers/growers, for example disease prediction forecasts, crop protection research and retail planning. A consortium comprising electronics, agricultural chemicals, materials, industrial design and several leading academic institutions have come together with farmers and growers to develop the solution for deployment in the UK and globally.

Farmers face an urgent crisis from the degradation of their soils. Our current system of agriculture has resulted in soils losing CO2, and damaging water quality, biodiversity, and crucially crop yields. The current system does not inform farmers how to care for their particular soils, or reward them for doing so (e.g. new ELMS soil subsidies promote generic practices which may not always be the best solution for every field). There is currently no way for farmers to leverage at scale the experience of comparable farms. While **arable and grassland farmers** take hundreds of thousands of soil samples every year, the analysis of them is subjective and does not allow for any comparison with other farms' data or knowledge. There is no way to find out if other relevant, comparable farms have found innovative new techniques which improve soil health. More widely, other players in the agri-food chain, from supermarkets to regulators, do not have an easy way to measure and monitor soil health across the country. This means they cannot incentivise improvements - "what you can't measure you can't manage". While on-farm soil data is a potential solution but will remain an untapped resource, siloed on individual farms, until farmers can be incentivised to share it. Soil Benchmark's ambition is to provide useful benchmarking and 'soil health-checks' for farmers in return for the sharing of their data. This will allow a much faster route to scale than taking new samples, which is the current method of soil benchmarking/mapping initiatives. Key to this ambition will be the contextual data required to interpret on-farm soil data. For instance data on temperature, rainfall patterns, and underlying soil type are all key to interpreting the 'raw' soil data that farmers will provide. This project will focus on identifying and preparing the contextual datasets required to interpret farm data, bringing together the expertise and data-sets of NIAB, ADAS, and the BGS to help Soil Benchmark tackle this critical step required to execute our ambitious plans. In addition the project will conduct detailed, quantitative customer interviews with farmers to gain more data to help guide the development of Soil Benchmark's initial product (building on existing, non-quantitative customer research which has validated the concept). We will actively manage and mitigate unknown and known risks. Our sound practical plan demonstrates value with tangible outcomes crucial to developing our MVP - a critical step to commercialisation.

The UK wine industry has expanded rapidly over the past 10 years, with an estimated 3,800ha now under vine. This has generated a sharp growth in sales of British wines, with the market now valued at £292m. This trend looks set to continue, and with many vineyards being in early stages of establishment, work to identify soil management practices best suited to the UK's cool climate is needed now. Research based in traditional wine regions such as the Mediterranean has limited relevance to UK vineyards, so our research proposal is very timely. The relationship between the vineyard soil environment and the quality of the resulting wine is referred to as the _terroir_ concept, the tenet of which is that a change to the soil environment will have a noticeable effect on the attributes of the wine produced. Viticulture in the UK is still a relatively young industry, and there is much to be learnt in terms of achieving optimum and consistent yields and juice quality while using the most sustainable practices. Cover crops could play a significant role here, by enhancing soil health through their effects on soil carbon (C) content, hydraulic conductivity, biodiversity and soil structure. Legumes are commonly used in cover crop mixes, and they can bring the added benefit of increased soil nutrient availability, thereby reducing the need for fertiliser applications. Mechanical weeding strategies offer a chemical-free alternative to standard herbicide regimes without compromising berry yield or quality. Soil health and soil C sequestration are major focuses of current agri-environment policies and payment schemes, therefore the implementation of cover cropping and mechanical weeding practices should bring both environmental and monetary benefits to UK viticulturists. Project outputs will include evidence-based recommendations for growers on the best ground management approaches to suit UK vineyards. Industry-wide uptake of these practices would demonstrate to the public, the horticultural sector and retailers that the viti industry is committed to achieving environmental and net-zero goals. We propose to carry out the first full-scale experiments and commercial trials of cover cropping and mechanical weeding strategies in UK vineyards to identify and tailor optimal soil management approaches for the UK industry. The trial sites will serve as long-term research facilities on commercial holdings in Kent, and our intention is that they host separate but allied future research on beneficial insects and soil pathogens. We intend to commercialise project outputs through an existing route.

The predicted increase of global warming poses a large risk for crop productivity even in protected cropping systems. Tomatoes have a narrow range of optimal growing temperatures and even when grown in fully controlled glasshouse environments, heat stress can trigger flower abscission and limit fruit yield as well as affect fruit development and maturity. Fluctuations of yields caused by unpredictable heatwaves have an impact on the food supply chain, as over-estimation of UK supply necessitates costly imports. Temperature extremes are already impacting on quality and supply of tomatoes and peppers, even from countries such as the Netherlands. Retailers, NGO's and consumers are also more aware of the impact on the environment of growing and importing food from unsustainable sources. K&M is a major hub for the UK protected edibles industry, but there is scant UK-based research to support and inform growers' decision-making to mitigate these climate-related impacts. Studies have shown that even modest increases in vitamin C content can lead to broad tolerance to common abiotic stresses such as salt, cold, ozone, and herbicide treatment. Tomatoes contain only moderate amounts of vitamin C and this depends on genotype, climatic conditions, fruit development, maturation, senescence, and duration of storage. Genetic regulation of vitamin C concentrations in plants can be achieved through the fine-tuning of biosynthetic, recycling, and transport mechanisms. Application of vitamin C effectively primed tomato roots and significantly alleviated heat stress effects on seedlings by reducing oxidative damage and increasing vitamin C, proline contents, and photosynthetic pigments. Iron-nanoparticles can improve iron (Fe) plant uptake, but can also increase plant growth, yield and tolerance to abiotic stresses. Iron is a key trace-element essential for human health, and a dietary deficiency causes physiological disorders, diseases, and can be fatal, thus constituting a primary global public health challenge. In the UK mean Fe intakes females are below the Reference Nutrient Intake. Increasing the vitamin C content in plants can have a triple-positive effect: producing food with a high content of AsA for human health, increasing postharvest shelf life, and, finally and just as important, increasing the tolerance of plants to various kinds of stresses. By combining vitamin C and Fe biofortification, we will supply the UK market with nutrient-dense tomatoes and enhance Fe bioavailability, while improving the productivity and sustainability of UK tomato production whilst lowering emissions and reducing waste.

The invasive fruit fly, spotted wing drosophila (SWD), is one of the most serious pests in soft fruit production worldwide. This is due to the females' ability to pierce the intact skin of ripening fruits and lay eggs, resulting in considerable crop loss. SWD has been able to migrate quickly within the past 20 years aided by the movement of infected fruit material between continents. The pest was first detected in the UK in 2012 and is estimated that the current cost of mitigation and the crop loss due to damage is £20 - £30 million p.a. to the UK industry. Current mitigation measures include pesticide applications, high labour inputs involved with careful plant husbandry and regular picking of waste fruit, which must be carefully disposed of to prevent the fly returning to infect the crop. This project aims to identify strawberry and raspberry germplasm with reduced susceptibility or even resistance to SWD which would alleviate growers' reliance on control strategies including chemical plant protection products. There is variation between cultivars for differences in fruit characteristics such as skin thickness, sugar content, shade of colour and flesh firmness which may have an impact on the attractiveness of fruit to SWD. By identifying strawberry and raspberry accessions that are less susceptible to SWD, we can help develop breeding lines and less sensitive cultivars for the benefit of producers which currently suffer large crop losses resulting in large volumes of waste fruit. Furthermore, this project will provide invaluable information to breeding programmes and generate preliminary data for future research.

The originators of this project are leaders in the indoor growing system field and have successfully commercialised the technologies and associated services for on-site growing of high value produce (specialty salad leaves, herbs and microgreens) by foodservice operators. The lead business provides clients with a complete integrated system including hardware, consumables, remote monitoring and support services, which enables them to grow-their-own high quality crops with minimal effort and without needing horticultural expertise. This project will develop important new technologies that will improve the efficacy of the indoor growing systems and enable the production of crops with proven superior nutritional value. Growing Kent and Medway funding provides a vital opportunity for Evogro to access the state of the art horticultural & nutritional science facilities/expertise at NIAB EMR and deliver a significant component in the journey toward net-zero food production.

Fruit-growing generates over £1 billion for the UK economy annually with apples and pears contributing over £250 million. Forest bug, _Pentatoma rufipes_, is an emerging pest in orchards, probably driven by the withdrawal of pesticides, and the effects of climate change. It causes fruit deformity and pitting which can result in up to 40% losses in productivity and waste due to unsaleable fruit. The pest is currently monitored by laborious scouting for the pest in orchard trees. This project will aim to identify and synthesise species-specific pheromones for forest bug that will provide innovative approaches for monitoring and controlling this pest. The synthetic pheromones will be used to attract the pest into traps, enabling growers and agronomists to easily estimate numbers in orchards and predict fruit damage and yield losses. In addition, the development of synthetic pheromones will make it possible to develop non-pesticidal control options in the future, including mass trapping and mating disruption. These approaches will help reduce the need for conventional, chemical insecticides that disrupt integrated pest management programmes and potentially harm the environment. The project will help growers transition towards net zero emissions by avoiding unnecessary application of insecticides and reducing emissions involved in harvesting and storing unmarketable fruit. The project is led by Agrovista UK Ltd which is a leading supplier of agronomy advice, seed, crop protection products and precision farming services, working in partnership with horticultural growers. Other commercial partners are Avalon Fresh Ltd, an agronomic and technical advice provider across the fruit value chain and Russell IPM, a UK specialist producer of innovative products for pest and disease management. They will collaborate with scientists from NIAB and NRI who have internationally recognised expertise in identification, synthesis and application of pheromones for monitoring and control of insect pests. English apple and pear growers will be key to the project, providing sites to study the pest, collect insect material and evaluate new products. Because of the importance of the orchard industry to the UK economy, the outputs of this project will be particularly applicable here. However, forest bug is a pest in other European countries, so the results will have much wider impact with the potential for developing new skills and products outside the region.

This project aims to develop new approaches for increasing resilience of established and newly planted apple orchards. The two main threats to apple production currently are apple canker (_Neonectria ditissima_) and climate change induced severe weather events such as droughts and floods causing tree stress and devastating losses to growers. Apple canker is a perennial problem for the UK's apple production, more than half of which is based in the Kent and Medway region. It causes up to 30% tree mortality in newly planted trees and significantly reduces the yield and quality of mature orchards. The problem has recently increased in severity and impact due to high density planting of very susceptible commercial varieties and the absence of effective chemical control. The canker problem is compounded by the extreme weather events such high rainfall causing waterlogging and droughts that stress the trees, which stunts growth and further increases susceptibility of trees to apple canker. Another issue in young orchards is apple replant disease caused by a variety of microorganisms. In this project we will develop new integrated pest management strategies to counter the effects of extreme weather and apple canker. Our approach will combine the use of sustainable above ground and below ground amendments based on beneficial microbes. A combination of biocontrol agents, plant growth promoting microorganisms, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), and biostimulation of plant defences will be used. Our previous research suggests that Trichoderma soil amendment can control oomycetes, such as Pythium, that are one of the main causal agents of in apple replant diseases. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are known to directly and indirectly combat the deleterious effects of waterlogging and drought and have been implicated in modulating plant defences.

**The Phos Cycle Experimental Development Project investigates up-scaling challenges to successfully recycle and up-cycle the 'Expired Fire Extinguisher Powder' (EFEP) chemical waste stream.** By UK law, every 3 years fire extinguishers are required to be disposed of and replaced. Industry-wide, all materials from an expired fire extinguisher are recycled; (i.e.metal cylinder sold for scrap metal, plastic and rubber hoses can be recycled) except for the EFEP. By law, EFEP cannot be reused, as it fails to satisfy the required safety and performance criteria. Phos Cycle provides a comprehensive solution at scale to the chemical EFEP waste stream problem. EFEP is currently sent to landfills at a great economic and environmental cost, or and worse; illegally disposed of. An indication of the scale of the problem is highlighted by the sheer size of the EFEP waste stream; approximately 98,000 Tons of this chemical waste powder is land-filled annually in the UK and Europe alone. Through its proprietary process, Phos Cycle converts the EFEP waste stream to industrial phosphate-based value streams, thereby 1\. Negating the negative environmental effects of land-filling 2\. Reducing the associated disposal costs for our suppliers 3\. Minimizing the incentive for illegal disposal and 4\. Providing our customers with a sustainable (zero-carbon) alternative to conventional phosphate-based products, which are currently: * Fossil formed * Mined * Ammonia processed (exhibit high carbon footprint) * Import based products Working in collaboration with the University of Wolverhampton, University of Greenwich and NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Botany), the Phos Cycle project will consider a variety of chemical and mechanical up-scaling process solutions, to recover the valuable components from this waste product so that it can be recycled back into commercial industries at scale. With an already operational Pilot Plant and IP certified, Phos Cycle and it's academic partners are best suited to tackle the final innovative work packages for the project to move from TRL5 to TRL 8\. Phos Cycle's vision is to recycle 80% annually of the UK EFEP waste stream market within the first two years of full-scale plant operation on behalf of the UK companies in our value chain. Our project aims to make the UK the innovation center for the recycling of fire extinguisher powder: A global waste stream problem with the innovative solution and successful industrial operation in the UK.

NIAB is looking to develop the NIAB Malling Agri-Robotics Site (**NIAB MARS**) platform. This will be a national proving ground for agricultural robots, drones, autonomous systems and related technologies. At NIAB's East Malling (NIAB EMR) site in Kent are a range of different cultivation methods including: * Glasshouses * Polytunnels * Orchards * Vineyard * Arable land These provide the perfect set of cropping systems and terrains for the NIAB MARS platform. Where alternative crops or terrains are required these will be made available through NIAB's existing network of sites across the country. NIAB MARS will incorporate a "sandbox" environment for robot development within these environments. Companies can locate within a new agritech incubator planned for the site or "pay-to-play" on a weekly or monthly basis. In addition, NIAB MARS will provide a structured and standardised testing and evaluation service as well as expert input on agricultural practice. Included within the sandbox will be virtual resources to support robot developers. The proposed SBRI project aims to carry out a short feasibility study with the aim of developing a proposal that can be submitted to the UKRI infrastructure fund. Initial data will be gathered through workshops and interviews with existing robot developers, growers and other industry stakeholders. This will be followed by a series of systems engineering trades to develop the user requirements, systems requirements, business model, physical plan and operating concepts for NIAB MARS.

Seed coatings increase agricultural productivity; improve seed handling; reduce dust formation; increase flowability of seeds through planters; protect seeds from pests and diseases; provide fungicides and pesticides; increase germination and plant growth; and, deliver active ingredients and beneficials. However, most seed coatings rely on petroleum-derived polymers, which release microplastics in agricultural soils. These microplastics are considered an emerging threat to soil stability, crop development, biodiversity, and ecosystem function and are expected to be banned in Europe by 2027\. Working with Croda International and researchers at NIAB, Xampla will develop a bio-based, biodegradable and microplastic-free replacement for conventional petroleum-derived seed coatings.

Vegetable growing in the Fens is highly productive and profitable, but is accompanied by large greenhouse gas emissions and the degradation of drained peat soils. Restoring wetlands could reduce environmental impacts, however, this will cut off one-third of UK vegetable supply at its roots. To avoid this, the project will integrate food and renewable energy production (Agro-voltaics) with zero-trafficked soil and crop management, to allow re-wetting of peat soils. This study will build and demonstrate the feasibility of the Agro-voltaic cultivation system and evaluate the wider potential to enable the production of zero-emissions Fens vegetables on peat soils.

The global soft fruit industry suffers up to 80% crop losses from an invasive fruit fly, spotted wing drosophila (SWD). Growers rely on chemical insecticides to protect fruit from SWD, costing £11bn. We have identified a SWD pathogenic fungus and a bait which SWD feeds on. In this project we will test these two approaches in combination, to develop a more targeted and less environmentally damaging approach to SWD control. This strategy will be a first for this global pest and enable fruit growers to reduce insecticide inputs and residues, offering a potentially game-changing solution to SWD.

Control of spotted wing drosophila (SWD), which attacks high-value soft fruit, a £2.7bn market in Europe and North America, relies on chemical insecticides. This project will develop and validate Zyzzle's innovative farm-focused sterile insect technique (SIT) SWD solution by conducting trials in controlled and commercial settings. SIT can improve crop yield compared to chemicals, increasing agricultural productivity. It is species-specific and non-toxic, protecting biodiversity and facilitating adoption of organic farming; hence it improves sustainability and reduces emissions. This project is a collaboration between Zyzzle, NIAB, a world-leading authority on SWD, and Berry Gardens Growers, the UK's leading berry organisation.

Conventional and organic agriculture are highly dependent on various agro-chemicals to ensure that field grown crops are free from disease and satisfy production volume needs. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) has moved growing crops for consumption away from fields and the disease pressures that come from the open air and soils. This has massively reduced the need for agro-chemicals but there is still some way to go. It is still uneconomical to produce seeds in CEA facilities and so these are produced outside. The result is that the outer shell of the seed is now the main source of diseases that enter CEA production. When a disease takes hold in CEA, it can be devastating as the conditions that a plant thrives in, are the same as those a fungus or bacteria will. It is possible to treat seeds with agro-chemicals to remove these pathogens, but that is not desirable for both environmental and consumer driven needs. One of the focuses of our project is to scale up and further develop a non-chemical seed pre-treatment method that uses only air and electricity to kill any fungi or bacteria on the surface of the seed without harming the embryonic plant contained within it. Reducing the disease pressure isn't all that is needed. As many crops have been extensively bred and selected for field growth, the key characteristics that breeders have focused on are generally to make the plant resistant to diseases which reduces crop losses for the farmer. As these characteristics are less important to CEA, we can take this opportunity to select varieties that have better characteristics for the grower and the consumer such as higher yielding, more nutrient dense varieties. We will do this by carrying out crop trials as well as using DNA sequencing techniques to allow us to pinpoint molecular signposts in the genetic code of CEA suitable varieties. By looking at the DNA, we will be able to translate our discoveries in spinach into other plants more easily. When these two approaches are combined, a more nutritious, CEA focused crop can be grown free from threat of disease and use of agro-chemicals. The advances made within the project will also benefit the UK economy as well as the consumer as the partners that have come together also market technology and solutions to the global agricultural industry.

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund's Transforming Food Production challenge seeks to produce resilient and sustainable food more efficiently to meet demands in 2050\. Greenhouses go a long way towards meeting this challenge. **Industrial-scale greenhouses** are the **only scalable solution** to meeting the accelerating demand for healthy, locally-grown food - and to **secure our food system against population growth and climate change**. In sizes up to 15 hectares (20 football pitches), greenhouses in the UK already produce \>£100M of vegetables each year. Through control of climate, irrigation and lighting, **greenhouses can create the ideal conditions for crop growth**, in all seasons, **alongside any city on earth**. Crops can be grown for nutritional content rather than transportability, at **10x the yield of field farming, using 90% less water and zero pesticides**. Given that food production must rise 50% by 2050, agriculture already accounts for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, farmland is being contaminated by heavy pesticide use, and climate change is expected to significantly decrease the yields of field farming - greenhouses are the only scalable solution and are **essential to the UK's agricultural future**. This project will develop 1) **the world's first Autonomous Growing System(AGS)**; 2) **demonstrate the AGS** and 3) undertake a knowledge exchange program. The AGS will provide optimised data-driven growing for any crop variety, in any greenhouse, in any location - **significantly increasing production levels and resource-efficiency** in existing greenhouses, and **accelerating the deployment of new greenhouses in the UK** and around the world. The Industrial Challenge Strategy Fund seeks to invest in **world-leading research** and **highly-innovative businesses**. The partners in this project fit this description. Optimal Labs Limited is a UK SME at the **cutting-edge of greenhouse automation**; NIAB is the **UK's fastest growing crop sciences research body**; La Serra Limited operates the **UK's most modern greenhouse.** The project is supported at no cost to the UK taxpayer by experts from the Dutch horticultural industry. This **£2.75M project** aims to **elevate UK controlled environment agriculture to being the best globally** and therefore much more abundant, fulfilling the aims of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund's Transforming Food Production challenge **at the scale that only greenhouses can**.

Soft fruit is an exciting product area with excellent growth potential. Although UK soft production is growing by ca. 8%/year, **demand for** berries by UK consumers still exceeds supply. Continued growth is needed to displace often inferior imports, but this must be achieved on a sustainable basis through efficient utilisation of valuable resources (primarily water and inorganic fertilisers) and minimal environmental impact. Soft fruit growers know that a sub-optimal supply of macro- and micro-nutrients will limit marketable yields and berry quality, but most guidelines on fertiliser inputs are hopelessly outdated. These formulations are often adjusted based on anecdotal observations by growers and agronomists, but there is little scientific basis to these amendments and many unneeded macro- and micro-nutrients accumulate in the substrate. Growers then apply irrigation flushing events to remove these harmful so-called "ballast ions" which wastes water, can result in lowered berry firmness, flavour and shelf-life, and poses a risk to local groundwater quality. Excessive N inputs often result in elevated emissions of N2O as a result of denitrification, and N2O emissions account for ca.44% (global warming potential \[GWP\] basis) of the total agriculture-related GHG emissions. CO2 has a GWP value of 1 while N2O has a value of 298, making the latter a more potent GHG. Reducing N inputs in agriculture and horticulture by more closely matching demand with supply should help to reduce N2O emissions, but this is a risky strategy if guidelines and monitoring sensors are not available. Our nutrient demand modelling work in IUK 102124 showed that N input to substrate-grown raspberry could be reduced by 32% without affecting marketable yields and berry quality, and overall water and fertiliser demand was lowered by 20% due to a reduction in plant biomass (less luxuriant growth). In a follow-up project IUK 102640, we have developed a prototype AI-based nitrogen / phosphorous / potassium (NPK) real-time sensor that growers can use to determine NPK availabilities in coir to inform their fertigation decision making, and this will be tested under commercial conditions in 2020\. Here, we propose to combine new variety-specific N demand models with a prototype AI-based sensor that estimates NPK coir availabilities in real time, and embed the outputs into the NetBeat(tm) platform. The SmartNutrigation system will maintain coir NPK availabilities within a narrow optimum range during each developmental stage using outputs from nutrient demand models and real-time feedback from AI-based NPK sensors thereby maximising sustainability.

Demand for healthy products including fresh fruit continues to increase. In the UK soft fruit purchases now account for 22 percent of all consumer fruit purchases. According to Defra's agricultural report, volumes have continued to climb, with the market value of soft fruit grown in the UK worth an estimated at £670 million in 2018\. There is increasing consumer and retailer demand for high-quality UK-grown soft fruits, and this will increase further post-BREXIT as retailers favour British produce. Great efforts have been made in the past decades to breed varieties with better taste and appearance, whilst investments in improving growing practices has led to production and quality gains. However, achieving consistently ripeness and quality across variable and challenging growing seasons is difficult, and there is a large variability of fruit ripeness after picking due to the invisible changes in colour during ripening. Despite the industry's best efforts in picking, punnets often still contain under or over ripe fruit, leading to negative impact on the perception of fruit quality by consumers. We will develop a low-cost, spectral imaging based Augmented Reality (AR) prototype glasses device for pickers that can determine and label the fruit ripeness in real-time and assist growers to produce high quality berries with consistent ripeness in every punnet, leading to reduced waste throughout the value-chain. As a proof of concept, blackberry will be used as an exemplar. The blackberry market in the UK is growing by around 20% year-on-year currently reaching £37.4m in annual retail sales, but determination of ripeness by pickers can be extremely difficult due to the very subtle colour differences between almost-ripe, ripe, and over-ripe fruit. In this project, lab-based fruit quality assessments will be conducted to understand their relationship with ripeness, and hyperspectral imaging will be applied to identify a simple spectral index determining the ripeness. A lightweight AR frame and LED display will be custom-built to satisfy the application and cost requirement. By integrating a spectral filter or fast tuning narrow-band LED light source, spectral imaging will be processed in real time, and the ripeness of individual berries labelled on the LED display. The AR technology based picking glasses can be extended to other soft fruits and will have a large impact on the UK soft fruit industry, which as a project partner will have first access to the technology, making a step-change in consistent fruit quality, competitiveness and so economic impact.

The originators of this project are leaders in the indoor growing system field and have successfully commercialised the technologies and associated services for on-site growing of high value produce (specialty salad leaves, herbs and microgreens) by foodservice operators. The lead business provides clients with a complete integrated system including hardware, consumables, remote monitoring and support services, which enables them to grow-their-own high quality crops with minimal effort and without needing horticultural expertise. The system is technologically innovative because it combines flexible, multi-zonal hardware with a sophisticated cloud-based software platform that combines image processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence to enable monitoring of every crop and automatic programming of the cabinets. This distributed network approach is transformative because it moves the means of production to the point of consumption. Leafy salad crops are inherently perishable and are wasted in huge quantities. This solution eliminates this wastage and the associated negative environmental impacts of the conventional supply chain. The existing Evogro system is highly adaptable and can produce a wide range of crops, but the purchase and operating costs of these systems is still too high for all but the most committed consumer and it is only economic to grow specialty produce. This project will address these issues by researching and developing the next generation of value engineered and autonomous growing system that will dramatically reduce the cost of ownership.This will greatly expand the addressable market by making it affordable for new consumer segments and make it economic to produce mainstream crops. The project will also apply the next generation system to the growing of these mainstream crops, optimising the growing models to maximise their nutrient density. The consortium will run pilot trials of the next generation growing system in volunteer groups of foodservice operators (including some sectors like education and care homes with potential to deliver additional social benefits) and household consumers. This project has the potential to be transformative because it radically disrupts the conventional supply chain and delivers improved nutrition and sustainability benefits to consumers. With widespread adoption, distributed plant growing systems could save tens of thousands of tonnes of food waste annually in the UK. This is a nascent market but activity is accelerating around the world. The company has already begun exporting and sees strong potential in overseas markets. This project will position UK technology at the forefront of this new global industry.

There is increasing consumer and retailer demand for high-quality UK-grown strawberries, and this will increase further post-BREXIT as retailers favour British produce. Currently, c. 30% (Defra) of strawberries consumed in the UK are imported, and so there is a great opportunity to displace these, often inferior, imports during the home-grown season and boost the UK economy. However, achieving consistently high yields and quality across variable and challenging growing seasons is difficult, and new growing innovations are needed if UK fruit production is to be optimised to meet market demand, and imports reduced. There is much variability in plant yield and berry quality over a typical covered table-top production system, but the reasons for this are not fully understood and the magnitude of the effect has not been satisfactorily quantified, and so it cannot be managed or predicted. This variability confounds growers' best efforts to forecast yields to inform marketing strategies, and inaccurate forecasts lead to under-supply or to surpluses, necessitating purchases from outside the UK or fruit destruction, both of which are very costly. We will develop new soft fruit growing strategies from an improved understanding of how to optimise individual plant performance across the growing area. We will refine recently-developed fruit harvest and ripening models by incorporating high resolution, satellite-derived weather inputs, and data feeds will be used to inform growers' polytunnel venting strategies to better control growing conditions. Variable ripening rates and yields will be captured using a new app, and algorithms will be developed and embedded in a cloud-based BerryPredictor tool that will enable growers to forecast yields with much greater accuracy and precision than currently possible, across the entire cropping area. BerryPredictor will also provide POs and UK growers with access to real-time accurate yield prediction profiles for the first time. The majority of the R&D work will be carried out at the NIAB Water Efficient Technologies (WET) Centre, an industry-funded soft fruit precision growing demonstration and KE centre, the remit of which is to showcase the latest innovations in soft fruit growing, and promote the commercialisation of project outputs from our IUK and industry-funded projects. BGG commercial growers will provide weather data to inform the models, and yield data to ground-truth BerryPredictor. Project outputs will benefit UK growers (yield, premium price, import substitution), POs (better product with enhanced reputation, reliability and improved marketability), supermarkets and consumers (flavoursome, phytonutritious UK-grown fruit) and wider society (sustainable intensification).

Feeding 9.8 billion people in 2050 in a climate change context will depend on our skills to keep soils alive. Food production is directly correlated with soil health. To manage and improve soil health, farmers need reliable information about the chemical, physical and biological properties of their soils. There are methods available to assay soil nutrients and determine the physical properties of soils. Only respiration-based methods are currently available to farmers to measure the microbial contributions to soil health, but these give no information on the microbiota present and are affected by other sources of CO2 in the soil. Next-generation sequencing has potential as a biological indicator of soil health, but the costs are high, the tests take hours to conduct, and the data obtained requires experts in order to interpret it. Our solution is to tap into the wealth of information contained in the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by soil biota. These have been demonstrated to be excellent indicators of soil biota activity, but their detection and analysis currently requires laboratory-based instrumentation and skilled personnel. In preliminary work we developed a sensor that can detect soil VOCs and demonstrated that its responses can be correlated with soil health. In this project we will determine the responses of such sensors to a wide range of different soils and cropping systems. These will be correlated with conventional soil health indicators and next-generation sequencing data. Machine learning will be used to process the data obtained to provide a cloud-based database that can be accessed directly by sensors in the field. Use of robots to deploy the sensors with associated GPS data will be investigated to provide farmers with comprehensive and fine-scale data of soil health on their farms so that they can assess the impact of farming practices on soil health and adapt these to increase soil health and productivity. Testing every square meter of land data would be unfeasibly expensive with current testing methods (£60/sample) as the average UK farm size is 930,000 sq. m.. The project will be led by P.E.S. Technologies, a start-up company that developed a plastic electronic sensor for soil VOCs, in collaboration with Hutchinsons, UK agronomy specialists, and the Small Robot Company. Academic partners will be NIAB-EMR, the leading UK horticultural research organisation, the Natural Resources Institute with long experience in VOC profiling, and the University of Essex with expertise in machine learning.