Rsk Adas Limited Public Funding

Coming Soon Bymetric is Launching Soon

Behavioural and cognitive biases reduce the ability of decision makers to adopt the best solutions among the alternatives available. Borrowed from pre-existing knowledge in psychology on priming, “nudges” are defined as gentle interventions in a decision maker’s choice architecture (default choice, information, presentation, framing etc.), which enhance the likelihood of optimal choices. ForestAgriGreenNudges will first review initiatives and projects which explicitly or implicitly use Green Nudges to promote the use of sustainable practices in farming and forestry. It will then assess each type of nudge according to two types of criteria: 1) Criteria associated with efficacy in promoting the use of the desired practices over a sufficiently long period and 2) Criteria dictated by ethics and good practice principles (transparency, nudgee awareness, participation/self-regulation, actor-specificity, etc.) that guarantee the quality of the implementation process. Nudges will then be tested in the field and assessed on a grid, reflecting the desiderata of efficacy and implementation quality. The set of successful nudges will be enriched by innovative nudges based on information regarding attitudes and strategies of actors along the entire value chain. The resulting set of nudges together with their corresponding implementation guidelines, and the business models and market conditions which favor their application in agroforestry will be collected on an online tool (iNUDGE Academy) whose target audience will include policy makers, wholesalers, retailers, farmers and foresters. The tool will associate each nudge with implementation rules, possible domains of application and possible risks in terms of efficacy/good practice tradeoffs. Diffusion of the results among farming and forestry experts, policy makers, and actors along the value chain will maximise the impact of the project, enhancing the adoption of sustainable practices in the farm and in the forest.

A project to determine how UK produced natural fibres can be used to replace the existing, highly intensively processed, growing media for growing fruit and vegetables in commercial glasshouses and polytunnels.

The legumES will ensure: 1, the uptake of best practices in agrobiodiverse legume-based cropped systems; 2, the uptake of methodologies and tools to quantify and balance the environmental and economic ecosystem service (ES) benefits provided by legumes; 3, that the ES benefits and cost offered by legumes are quantified across scales from field, farm, regional, national, and global levels; and 4, ES will be assessed to identify those conditions which are able to meet the EU targets: to decrease agrichemical inputs and losses, combat climate change, reverse biodiversity loss, and ensure the best nutritional provisioning. To achieve this, legumES offers a multi disciplinary consortium comprising 22 partners from 12 EU- and third countries (UK, CH) and including: 7, academic institutions; 6, Research and Technology Organizations; 5, SMEs (or micro-SMEs); 2, non-governmental organisations; and 2, large commercial companies. The individuals comprising legumES offer skills which include: agricultural-crop and -environment (ES) monitoring, life cycle assessment, economic- and socioeconomic-modelling, social-science, EU-agricultural and environmental policy, and law, plus decision support systems. The legumES research and innovation strategy centres on the use of a multiactor action-research approach, that is, where legume-facing stakeholders, and especially producers though all value chains actors, can ‘operate’, ‘collaborate’ and, reflect critically’ on the measured ES benefits and costs of legume-based cropped systems, including legumes use in marginal lands; so that an optimal balance of ES can be achieved with success locally, and globally. To help achieve this LegumES also centres activities on a suite of 25 innovative legume-based Pilot Studies which use a wide range of legume species and types, plus different cropping approaches and linked value chains spanning the pedoclimatic regions of Europe.

Fusarium basal rot (FBR) is a disease caused by the soil-borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cepae (FOC) that infects the roots and basal plate of onions leading to severe pre- and postharvest losses. Onions can become infected with FOC at any time during crop growth, but the biggest losses occur after harvest when asymptomatic bulbs extensively rot in store. Entire stores can be lost if disease levels rise above \>10-15% since it is unfeasible to rogue out infected bulbs. FOC is an increasing problem for UK onion growers due to climate warming, with warmer wetter summers favouring disease development. Critically, there are no effective control options and annual UK crop losses are increasing, leading to contraction of the industry in terms of both land plated and grower numbers. The industry desperately needs ways to assess FBR risk and manage the disease at different production stages, and as early as possible, to reduce losses. We have assembled a multidisciplinary team to implement novel detection and control approaches to FBR. The team's expertise spans remote sensing, onion agronomy, laboratory science and fundamental biology, enabling us to follow a holistic approach that covers the onion production from soil to store. This affords maximum flexibility and adaptability to provide a range of solutions including: \*A molecular diagnostic tool to measure Fusarium levels in soil and assess the risk of FBR pre-planting. \*Enhanced knowledge of agronomic factors affecting FBR expression and field-level management options to control FBR. \*A vision system to early detect FBR-infected onions in the field and during harvest. \*Smell-based sensor technologies to detect FBR-infected onions in early stages of storage. We intend to provide UK onion growers with a suite of FBR monitoring and mitigation options with the potential to reduce the prevalence of FBR by 50%. The anticipated impact of our project will be reducing the \>£10M annual losses due to FBR, and hence substantially improve the long-term productivity and resilience of the sector. This will give growers confidence to expand planted area and, in turn, allow the UK to reduce reliance on some of the ~300,000 tonnes of bulb onions that are currently imported annually. Reducing waste from FBR-infected onions will also improve sustainability of the industry by ensuring that financially valuable and carbon-intensive inputs for onion production are not lost.

The EU Farm to Fork strategy, which is at the heart of the European Green Deal, aims to make food systems fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly. To achieve the objectives of the Farm to Fork strategy, the Commission proposed, among other, new targets to reduce the use and risks of pesticides (RURP). The main objective of AdvisoryNetPEST is to establish and upgrade a network of advisory services across the EU, increasing the knowledge sharing between advisors, and among the whole AKIS, and the adoption of innovative solutions to RURP by farmers. The project will achieve this by: 1) Developing a EU network of advisors to RURP, based on existing networks and national AKIS, covering the 27 EU Members States (MSs) and the UK. To cover all MSs, the project will adopt a twinning approach: 14 National Networks will be created by the project partners, and these will engage with 14 Associated Networks through a twining program. The network will cover all European pedo-climatic areas, integrating four EU regional clusters and the most relevant crop sectors. 2) Identifying, selecting, and shaping Novel Approaches (NAs), which are technically, economically, socially, and environmentally viable, that will be adapted and replicated across the EU. 3) Exchanging knowledge and training advisors and students to promote the adoption of the NAs. 4) Connecting the project with other national and EU projects, initiatives and policy makers. 5) Scaling up the NAs, fostering the adoption of innovative solutions by farmers and the whole value chain. The project will embrace a multi-actor approach, gathering 19 partner organisations with a vast experience in advisory and crop protection. The consortium will also represent a diversity of AKIS stakeholders, including advisors, researchers, and other value chain actors, as the cornerstone of a regional, national, and EU level network that will allow a wide sharing of technical and practical expertise to RURP in the long-term.

no public description

Worldwide, crops are threatened by invertebrate pests which cause feeding damage and transmit plant viruses. High levels of infestation can cause up to 80% yield loss. Currently, farmers are advised to follow economic thresholds and to apply management interventions when thresholds are exceeded. Generally, thresholds are defined as the level of pest infestation above which it is expected the crop will suffer economic damage. As restrictions on insecticide use increase and a greater number of insecticide resistant pest populations emerge, growers are looking towards more sustainable integrated pest management (IPM) practices. To effectively deploy IPM practices three components are required: 1) accurate identification of the pest(s) present; 2) accurate information on thresholds and their efficacy; 3) information on insecticide resistance of the local/regional pest population. However, there are numerous barriers that restrict the uptake of IPM principles: Accurate identification of invertebrate pests is difficult and requires taxonomic training, a skill that growers often lack; current thresholds have received little testing and validation under field conditions, limiting grower confidence; and insecticide resistance information for key pests is spatially-limited and primarily provided on a national basis. The central barrier for IPM uptake is lack of grower confidence in their ability to identify a pest. In a recent project we developed an early-stage solution to this problem by building an AI-driven pest-detection model to identify insect pests in wheat crops (Innovate project 10002902). Here, we propose to build on the success of this project by expanding the AI-driven pest-detection model to pests of other arable crops and by integrating more information into the end-user output in order to address the other barriers to IPM uptake. To achieve this we will expand the pest detection model to above-ground pests of rapeseed and potato, integrate region-specific insecticide resistance status for key pests: cabbage aphid, peach-potato aphid, potato aphid, and the cabbage stem flea beetle, and test and validate thresholds for a subset of these pests. Our main output will be a smart-app that provides pest detection support, highlights the current threshold for the identified pest, and provides information on the insecticide resistant status of regional pest populations. AI-model development will be led by The University of Sheffield; provision of pest management advice and threshold testing will be led by ADAS; insecticide resistance testing will be led by The University of Liverpool; and the development of the smart-app user-interface will be led by Mutus Tech Ltd.

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

no public description

There were 27,420 ha of horticultural brassicas grown in the UK in 2020, worth £302 million to the UK economy (Defra horticulture statistics, 2020). Swede midge has become a devastating threat to UK brassica production in recent years, since the loss of the insecticide chlorpyrifos. Larval feeding is particularly threatening to headed crops like cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage. It is not possible to grow some of these crops organically anymore because of the midge. Use of crop mesh covers can reduce swede midge damage by excluding the adult midges and thus prevent egg laying but research is needed to use these more effectively and better understand the crop risks, especially as they are often removed for mechanical weeding. Current advice is to rely on rotation and distance from previously infested crops to prevent colonisation of the first-generation midge adults when they emerge from overwintered larvae and pupae in the soil. However, infestations have been found in fields located 20 miles from the nearest brassica crop on land that had not previously grown brassicas for 7-8 years. This behaviour makes it difficult to develop novel control strategies and is worthy of research. This project proposes to develop an environmental model using GIS to understand how landscape and crop history factors influence pest pressure of the first and second generations of swede midge. The environmental model will be useful to conventional and organic brassica growers alike to help inform crop protection decision making and planning. The project will also assess swede midge pest pressure with the use of mesh crop covers, taking into account crop history and landscape features to determine whether the midges are emerging from the soil in the current brassica field or flying into the crop from another source. The results of this project will help to design effective novel agroecological control strategies based on knowledge of swede midge biology and behaviour, such as trap cropping or use of suppressive cover crops.

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.

To place the UK on the path to Net Zero by 2050, the Committee on Climate Change recommends increasing UK woodland cover from its current level of 13% of total land cover to at least 17% and potentially 19%. A 19% increase means an extra 1.6 billion trees The Government's Tree Action Pan 2021-2024 has committed to increasing tree planting rates across the UK to 30,000Ha per year by the end of this Parliament. For public health and environmental reasons, pesticides, that are used to control weeds, disease and insects are at continual risk of being banned in the UK. To date the UK is meeting demand by importing trees and plants in unprecendented quantities. According to The Woodland Trust, imports rose by 92% from £52 million in 2016 to £100 million in 2020\. But the increased trajectory of imports is directly associated with the spread of disease. At least 20 serious tree pests and diseases have arrived since 1990 resulting in the loss of tens of millions of trees. Most have been brought in by imported trees. The UK has one of the best climates in the world for raising young trees. Investment in new forest nursery techniques and technologies will equip them to grown all the trees needed to meet planting targets, while creating jobs. Clearing up the devastation caused by ash dieback will cost an estimated £15 billion. A fraction of that could galvanise UK forest nurseries into production of diverse, healthy, native, regional trees on an industrial scale This project will: * Create a 1Ha forest nursery incorporating a minimum 5 tree and hedging species * Assess the effectiveness of solar powered crop establishment technology * Grow all plants to Soil Association organic standards * Assess germination, plant health, potential yield and cost * Assess the benefits of organically approved, biobased soil conditioners and seed treatments * Analyse the organic forest nursery market The aim is to not only improve the productivity and resilience of our own farming business but also to demonstrate and report a cropping opportunity that can be replicated by other growers throughout the UK's regions. The results from the study will be pooled with existing UK forestry research to help to form a solid basis for further growth in the face of increased competition from imports and a decreasing number of chemical plant protective products.

Farm-PEP (Performance Enhancement Partnerships) develops the platform, tools and partnerships that will enable farmers, advisors, industry and scientists to identify, test and share crop production practices that work on-farm. This will be achieved by: 1\. Providing farmers with the platform and digital connections that enable them to access and develop knowledge and develop/share ideas for improving farm performance; 2\. Providing benchmarking tools so that farmers can compare to other farms and identify what factors are driving/constraining performance, 3\. Developing digital tools that enable farmers and advisors to conduct field-scale experiments to test new ideas on-farm.

Sustainable management of UK wheat pests and maintenance of soil health have become a high-priority agricultural issue in the UK. This project will investigate the technical feasibility of integrating visual and contextual information with advanced data fusion techniques into a mobile pest management solution that offers: rapid detection and quantification of wheat pest by mobile devices; efficient forecasting of accepted pest thresholds for sustainable management; estimation of the corresponding efficacy of a pesticide for pest control. The project will be led by University of Sheffield, and build on existing technologies, data resources and platforms from previous projects within the consortium.

The vision for SecQuAL is a secure, quality assured, digitally enabled food ecosystem that will reduce waste, improve decision-making and provide consumers with confidence in the food they purchase and consume. The next best thing since sliced bread! SecQuAL's key objective is to overhaul the food supply chain from farm to fork. SecQuAL addresses current bottlenecks and inefficient paper practices, enables remote regulatory oversight and compliance, provides quality assurance throughout all supply chain links, and enables smart decisions to be made to reduce food waste, reduce carbon emissions as a result of unnecessary transport, and increase consumer confidence in the food purchased and consumed. SecQuAL is innovative because it brings technology to the fore to modernise a complete food ecosystem. It will increase the number of digital technology companies providing solutions for manufacturing industries by bringing together an excellent consortium with partners spanning the full food ecosystem introducing digital technologies to modernise current practices. SecQuAL will simplify a complex industry.

Oilseed rape and canola are two closely related _Brassica_ crops which are widely grown in Europe and Canada, with a market size measured in the tens of billions of US dollars. The oil-rich seeds produced by both crops are consumed in multiple ways, as a source of food (oil with omega 3 fatty acids), animal feed (seed cake as a protein source) and industrial use (such as renewable energy and detergents). Clubroot disease caused by the soil borne root pathogen _Plasmodiophora brassicae_ is threatening production. Disease management depends on early detection of the disease followed by rapid treatment of affected areas of the field with soil products such as lime. However, clubroot disease occurs in patches across the field. Traditional scouting relies on crop walking and clubroot patches can easily be missed in large fields. Furthermore, when clubroot is emerging it rarely causes above-ground symptoms which are visible to the naked eye. The RootDetect project will develop a semi-autonomous remote sensing tool that will efficiently scout large areas and 'see' clubroot symptoms earlier than the grower or agronomist. Affected areas in the field will then be mapped and linked to precision farming technology which will allow targeted treatment of infested patches. This will be cost effective for the grower and will minimise wastage and thus lower carbon emissions. AIRBORNE ROBOTICS will build a specialized UAV prototype for the agricultural environment. ADAS will validate data from the UAV with in-field assessments of clubroot disease and SII Canada will develop the algorithms necessary for machine learning for identification/diagnostics purposes. The product/service enabled by this project will be an integrated, data driven clubroot management tool. This will combine UAV capability with on-farm software which optimises the long- and short-term economics of clubroot management, based on remotely-sensed spatial data. The RootDetect smart tool will be competitively priced to ensure it is accessible to end users and maximise uptake of its use.

Covid19 has necessitated a rapid shift to digital communications by all individuals and organisations. Platforms that were already being used regularly by some (eg Teams, Zoom) have now become essential to many, and new solutions and technologies continue to emerge, along with the collective knowhow. However, these have not been able to fill the hole in the communication, conversation, networking and engagement space left by the absence of face-to-face shows, meetings and events in agriculture. There has so far been no formal evaluation of the impacts of Covid19 on Knowledge Exchange (KE) in agriculture or other sectors. Such KE is essential to progress in agriculture, enabling the improvement of food security & quality, productivity, profitability, sustainability, social welfare and the environment. Covid19 has highlighted the importance of agriculture in the UK, which now faces multiple challenges (and opportunities). UK agricultural productivity has lagged behind competitors for decades, in part due to fragmentation of the knowledge system. As the UK's leading independent provider of agricultural research and KE, ADAS will lead an Action Research approach, working with practitioners to evaluate and provide urgent insights into the impacts and responses in the AKIS and what KE approaches work best in the face of Covid19 disruption. Multiple stakeholders will co-create a new digital solution (Farm-PEP), bringing together tools, experience and knowhow to provide a dedicated Covid-secure online community space for KE. Crucially, this will integrate existing tools & initiatives (The Farming Forum, Agri-techE, Innovative Farmers, Yield Enhancement Network, Agricology, AHDB) and make full use of the social media, video and podcasts which have become important in recent months. Nothing comparable to Farm-PEP currently exists. Current platforms are disjointed and siloed, with discussions temporary in nature, easy to miss, and rarely leading to rich outcomes or collaboration. They do not contribute to a recognised knowledge base, with little opportunity for inclusive distillation, connection, development of ideas for further exploration or forming of coherent messages for widespread adoption. Farm-PEP will provide the space for deeper, trusted, meaningful connections, knowledge sharing, community building and collaboration. It will provide solutions and spaces where people can find out what's going on across the industry, can demonstrate what they are doing and solicit feedback in order to build shared knowledge. It will enable serendipitous, synchronous and asynchronous discussions and connections to be made around topics of interest.

UK Agriculture and the food system face challenges and opportunities from Covid-19 and Brexit, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation. UK farming faces change; in coming years farmers must farm in a different climate, with net-zero emissions, with reducing and redirected subsidy payments, with possible post-Brexit trade tariffs, producing healthier foods, reliably, with raised soil health, protecting threatened species and the qualities of air and water, whilst remaining commercially viable. The blueprints to achieve this do not currently exist, and can only be developed by working together. Productivity in UK agriculture lags well behind our international competitors, in part due to our fragmented knowledge & innovation system and relative lack of collaboration and sharing of knowledge and data. Arable agriculture has been very poor at systematically monitoring its inputs, processes and outputs (eg yield), so despite huge variability with and between fields and farms there is limited understanding of 'what works' in improving performance. On top of this Covid-19 has disrupted the normal knowledge exchange mechanisms through the numerous events & meetings that would normally occur. Since 2012 ADAS has pioneered new approaches to knowledge generation and exchange in agriculture through its 'Agronomics' and 'Yield Enhancement Networks (YEN)', working collaboratively to collect and share ideas and data, learning together. The YEN has been very successful in engaging farmers, advisors, industry and researchers to come together around a shared conceptual framework, make measurements of the things that matter, share their data, ideas and experience, derive insights and test decisions. A core principal is the sharing of relevant data to allow comparisons of performance against peers through benchmarking reports; this provides the incentive for growers to share their data, enabling insights to be drawn from analysis of the full dataset. The YEN now engages with over 300 farms in the UK, plus more across Europe and in Canada, and has expanded to cover seven crops, with new initiatives continually being added. However, funding for the YENs has been piecemeal and limited, relying entirely on industry sponsorship, so there has so far been no large-scale investment in the digital infrastructure needed to properly support the data exchange, visualisations, reporting, and analysis, that would really enhance the experience for YEN users, and would make the YEN concept really scalable to a much broader audience at low cost, tackling any number of issues, not just yield, and enabling new business models for profitable and sustainable expansion of the YENs to be developed. We propose here development of 'Dynamic Benchmarking' to enable growers to easily compare the performance of their systems against similar systems of their choosing. This functionality will be available to all YENs. We will develop YEN-Zero as a new YEN with a far broader remit, available to all growers to calculate and compare greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities of their crops across all their fields. This will drive the collation of a large shared data resource from which ADAS and the community will derive insights and future revenues, from UK and beyond.

"Today, the majority of farmers spray fungicides prophylactically on crops to minimise risk and insure against disease ingress. Most farmers, or their consultants, spend hours inspecting crops but can't easily predict what incubating (invisible) infection is already in the crop or what may start to develop as a result of increasing pathogen presence in the environment. Weather-based disease forecasting methods have been introduced to predict when to spray crops but often have unreliable results, especially against sporadic diseases. The market opportunity for **SpraySaver** is to transform today's '_**spray-and-pray**_' practices by offering a more reliable and precise scientific method of determining when to spray -- using locally gathered disease pathogen data and risk prediction/decision support models to assess crop disease risk. The added value to farmers is a big reduction in crop spray costs, safeguarded or better crop yields/productivity and greater effectiveness when sprays are applied. **SpraySaver** is the world's first automated field analyser system specifically designed for early detection of crop disease pathogens within crop growing environments. One analyser can monitor a wide geographic area of around 100 Ha (dependant on local environmental conditions) and can be configured to detect multiple crop disease pathogens. Each in-field analyser transmits 4G mobile data for analysis in the cloud. Local pathogen data is analysed alongside local weather data within a disease risk model to determine risks of crop disease infection. Pathogens that will be detected include _Sclerotinia_, which affects oilseed rape and carrots, yellow and brown rust of wheat, _Fusarium_ _graminearum_ of cereals, potato late blight, beet rust, and onion down mildew, thereby covering sporadic diseases of a wide range of crops typically grown near to each other under crop rotation. Analysis outputs at a local, regional or even national level can be viewed on multiple display devices with automatic alerts set at predetermined levels. This ambitious project will develop a better DNA quantification method, develop new assays for specific diseases of onion and wheat, and integrate detection with infection-condition models and economic models to make recomendations for spray regimes. The system will ultimately eliminate today's '_**spray-and-pray**_' practices by offering a more reliable scientific method of determining when to spray -- using locally gathered disease pathogen data and risk prediction/decision support models to assess crop disease risk. Integration of the system as a network will add robustness and reliability to the decision-making process."

Red Apple is looking to develop and implement technological innovation in the China and UK apple production systems to increase yield and quality as well as reduce supply chain losses. The project is testing two technologies: 1) spectral cameras that can identify plant stresses due to, for example, water or nutrient imbalances or pest and disease; 2) traceability systems that can transfer appropriate information to stakeholders along the supply chain to maintain higher quality levels and reduce losses. The findings from the first technology are expected to help growers to achieve a better orchard management around pruning, blossom management and harvest dates, which will eventually increase yields and quality in a sustainable manner, reducing inefficient inputs of fertiliser and pesticides. The second will ensure not only the reduced losses but also that quality attributes can be linked to particular producers as well as production techniques, management of the crop, and harvest dates. Thus the two parts of the project are interlinked

"An increasing global population and a difficulty in attracting sufficient numbers of workers from with the current EU is a direct threat to affordable and secure supply for the UK. In order to address this challenge, the agricultural and food manufacturing sectors are increasingly using technology to address the shortfall in labour availability. The suppliers and packers are the nexus between growers and retailers, which in the UK, deal with £13billion worth of fresh produce annually, 70% of which is sourced and imported by the supply and pack industry to meet consumer demand. Any perturbation in this flow of safe nutritious food will have severe consequences for human health and wellbeing. Robotic manipulation is the ""holy grail"" for fresh produce packing e.g. fruits and vegetables, which tend to be delicate objects with irregular shapes. This sector is dominated by manual labour, because of the need for intricate human handling and inspection skills; this intervention is required for the selection of unblemished product that consumers expect and demand all year round. In such applications, a sense of touch in the end-effector (robot-gripper) is critical. Unfortunately, robotic manipulator systems do not yet possess this capability. Current state-of-the-art systems essentially act open-loop, without the ability to successfully grasp an object if the mechanical interaction between the end-effector and the grasped object is not well predicted; such is the case with the handling of fresh produce. The consortium will develop **Robo-Pack**, an advanced robotic manipulator for the inspection and packing of fresh produce, initially targeting tomatoes. **Robo-Pack** builds upon proprietary tactile sensing and robot manipulation technology systems."

The coming gravity sensors based on Quantum Technologies (QT) have the potential to disrupt existing surveying practices through dramatically improved measurement sensitivities. GRAM is a collaboration between Teledyne e2v, RSK, the Canal & River Trust, the Coal Authority, Cranfield University and the University of Birmingham (UoB) to establish the Quantum Technology (QT) gravity sensor market opportunities against assessment of current geophysical technologies to determine soil compaction for precision agriculture, detection of water levels in disused mines and mineshafts and canal & river embankment leak detection. GRAM will baseline the capabilities of existing sensor technologies in the sectors identified, provide technical specification and performance requirements to the manufacturers of prototype and commercial QT gravity sensors and establish a market pull from the end users of the information generated by the sensors. Moreover, it will provide a market sizing and market penetration assessment to determine the size of the potential markets, analyse the competitors and determine the cost brackets for each of the three applications together with expected survey methodologies.

The project will investigate the feasibility of measuring grass yield and quality remotely by using satellite sensing technologies. If successful then the technology will enable farmers to improve yield and quality by optimising the timing of silage harvest, producing grass growth curves for bench marking and creating yield/quality maps which will enable precision management of crop inputs (e.g. fertilisers). The project is highly innovative because it will develop techniques for sensing grass crops through cloud and additional uniqueness will be achieved by sensing for grass quality as well as yield. This 12 month project is a collaborative project between industry partners; ADAS UK Ltd (Agricultural research and consultancy), Precision Decisions (precision farming company) and farm levy board AHDB.

The project will investigate the use of archive satellite imagery to predict spatial variability within arable fields. Many applications of precision agriculture use current satellite imagery to provide guidance on localised management operations, for example application of Nitrogen fertiliser, but assumptions have to be made about the causes of spatial variation. A 20-year archive of satellite image data will be developed to assess the degree of persistence of spatial patterns over years and their dependence on weather and cropping factors. Maps of potential yield variation and other interpretive tools will allow more intelligent, context-based assessments that are expected to lead to improved land management with both economic and environmental benefits. The project is being conducted by a consortium led by SOYL, together with ADAS, RSAC, AHDB and the University of Nottingham.

This project seeks to establish the feasibility of (i) using multiple Earth Observation data to deliver canopy progress curves for every field in the UK, and (ii) integrating these into a Crop Intelligence System with soils, met and crop records, so as to provide tools and services for a range of decision support, benchmarking, strategic and tactical uses for farmers, industry and government customers. Within this feasibility study we will engage with a range of potential users, suppliers, partners and investors to scope out the requirements and commercial opportunities for the Crop Intelligence System. We will demonstrate the technical feasibility of producing field by field curves using public and commercial satellite data for an example area, specify the requirements and costs for building and operating a commercial system and identify the best business models to bring the Crop Intelligence System to commercial reality.

Fresh tomatoes and peppers are high value crops and are an important part of a healthy human diet. These products are highly perishable and are subject to peaks and troughs in production. Low temperatures are currently used to extend shelf life, but the shelf life is short and energy costs are high. As a result, the supply chain for such products remains unacceptable wasteful. A plant hormone, ethylene, is key to the ripening process, the production of which can be minimised by the use of chemicals. Chemical application however remains a barrier to consumer acceptance; the project will develop the use of an innovative non-chemical non-contact technique which safely removes ethylene from the air around fresh produce. Commercial scale trials and laboratory investigations will be conducted to establish when and how to safely suspend ripening within the supply chain to deliver safe, high quality nutritious fresh UK produced food to the consumer.

Fasciola hepatica, (liver fluke) is a common pathogen of sheep, goats and cattle and the causal agent of a disease known as fasciolosis. This is the cause of serious financial losses within the agricultural sector in terms of animal production resulting from poor growth and fitness to even loss of animals. The control of F. hepatica has been through the use of anthelmintic drugs, however widespread drug resistance means that these are now much less effective. An alternative treatment could be vaccination which would either prevent infection or reduce worm burden in the animal, both would prevent disease transmission. No vaccine to F. hepatica has been successfully brought to market. This Agri-Tech catalyst project will use a range of novel in vitro and in silico strategies to identify panels of F. hepatica components for potential multi-subunit vaccine design. This could lead to the development of effective vaccines for the control of fasciolosis, improving both animal performance and health and welfare.

One of the most costly problems growers of edible and non- edible horticulture crops face is loss in production and spoilage of harvested product to the fungal pathogen, Botrytis cinerea. Botrytis is commonly known as grey mould and is a significant factor in reduced shelf-life and consumer fresh produce waste. Standard 'control' techniques which involve direct spray application of fungicide are often ineffective. This project aims to develop an innovative non-contact approach to eradicate Botrytis both in the pre- and post- harvest environments for tomato and cut flower crops; this involves the use of ultra violet light to induce natural plant resistance mechanisms and the removal of the gaseous plant hormone ethylene to prevent Botrytis infection. The technique will minimise waste both in the production and domestic environments and extend shelf-life. It will also promote the industry's green credentials in meeting consumer expectations of available, residue free and safe fresh produce.

This proposal aims to develop an automated system for precise application of nitrogen (N) fertiliser and plant growth regulators (PGRs). Algorithms and software will be developed for integrating diverse forms of data from crop sensing instruments, yield maps, soil maps and soil N measurements. This will enable more accurate N fertiliser and PGR management through real-time decision making in the field, both on a field-by-field basis and on a metre-by-metre basis. Adopting this technology will improve crop productivity, increase farm profitability, maximise the efficiency with which N fertiliser and PGRs are used, and minimise pollution such as nitrate leaching and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The project is highly innovative in that it seeks to develop the first technology for variably applying PGRs and it will be the first technology to successfully integrate the complete range of information sources required to reliably predict the crop’s requirement for N fertiliser.

The Agronomics Project, led by ADAS and involving the Courtyard Partnership, BASF, Trials Equipment Ltd., VSN International and the British Geological Survey, will develop statistical approaches to enable high precision spatial experimentation on-farm using precision farming technologies. Agronomics has the twin aims of improving precision and extending the scale of agronomic testing and experimentation, so that farmers, advisors, suppliers, researchers and regulators will all be able to detect and aggregate small, as well as large, effects of treaments on crop performance and their interactions with soil type. New statistical approaches will also enable close optimisation of input rates in support of genetic (or other) enhancement of nutrient and agrochemical efficiencies. Agronomics will apply to all field crops and all cropping practices, and so will underpin the urgent quest for ‘sustainable intensification’ by transforming agronomic intelligence and maximising returns from research investment, first in the UK and then worldwide.