Awaiting Public Project Summary

The SporeDRONES project is led by Geo.Geo Ltd. in partnership with the James Hutton Institute, Allium & Brassica Agronomy, Vegetable Consultancy Service Ltd., East of Scotland Growers, and James Hutton Ltd. Our aim is to combine unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology with portable molecular diagnostic tools to provide early detection of airborne inoculum of crop pathogens. Air sampling for crop pathogens is currently limited to static ground based monitoring, whereas the proposed mobile aerial system will be able to rapidly sweep large geographic areas at multiple heights in the atmosphere using a single piece of equipment and provide rapid pathogen identification. Results will be transformed into actionable information and maps using cloud-based technology and desktop / web-based GIS environments combined with newly developed epidemiological models. This will enable a targeted and rapid response to disease outbreaks and an effective tool for communicating risks to a wide audience. SporeDRONES can be used for: (i) intense surveillance of areas where there is a high likelihood of disease outbreaks; (ii) rapid response to local outbreaks; (iii) risk assessment to confirm the presence of inoculum and define the areas for eradication and protection measures; (iv) advanced warning at larger regional- and landscape-scales; and (v) follow-up surveillance to confirm that aerobiological threats have been eliminated. SporeDRONES will serve as a platform technology to which other diagnostic tools and epidemiological models can be added. It is recognised that the biosecurity of island nations is particularly vulnerable with the spread and establishment of new pests and pathogens through aerial transmission and infected plant material, the latter driven by global commerce. Both pathways of invasion depend upon a favourable climate for the establishment of the pest and pathogen. The biosecurity fragility of the UK is further enhanced with the current trajectory of a changing climate to warmer and wetter weather patterns ideal for many oomycete mediated diseases. SporeDRONES offers a genuine opportunity to mitigate the impact of new (and exisiting) aerial pests and pathogens by developing a holistic package from sampling to actionable information that would provide a rapid and user friendly early warning platform for growers and agronomists. Whilst developed and validated against two diseases, potato late blight and onion downy mildew, the platform technology is flexible and can be easily transferred and deployed onto other pest and pathogens.

The Scottish seed potato industry, valued at £24.2m, produces approximately 51,200 tonnes of potato haulms annually as a by-product of seed potato cultivation. These haulms, essential for stopping tuber growth, are typically discarded in the field. However, they offer significant untapped potential, producing a high-value compound, Solanesol, used in the cosmeceutical, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries. This innovative collaborative project between Grampian Growers Ltd, the James Hutton Institute, and University of Aberdeen aims to transform potato haulms into a valuable resource, addressing the global demand for sustainable solanesol alternatives. Solanesol, a precursor for coenzyme Q10 and vitamin K2, is traditionally derived from tobacco leaves. The project seeks to create an ethical and environmentally sustainable source of solanesol, reducing reliance on tobacco cultivation, lowering carbon emissions, and contributing to the circular economy. With the capacity to yield up to 120 tonnes of solanesol based on 12,800 hectares of Scottish seed potatoes grown in 2024, Solanesol could open new added value streams for farmers and will support a more resilient agricultural model. Key objectives include developing a resilient, resource-efficient manufacturing process to: ● Maximise resource value and minimise waste. ● Use carbon-neutral, eco-friendly extraction techniques. ● Validate the purity and biological effectiveness of solanesol-enriched extracts. ● Provide a scalable solution for potato growers to diversify income. This project is particularly significant for Grampian Growers and the wider potato industry. It offers an opportunity to add value to agricultural by-products while addressing key challenges such as waste reduction and economic resilience. By unlocking new revenue streams, the project supports Scottish farmers and enhances the profitability of cooperative models, demonstrating the potential of innovation to strengthen rural economies. Pilot studies have shown that solanesol levels vary by potato variety, growing region, and harvest method. This project will determine the optimal ways to gather, store, and process haulms for scalable solanesol extraction. By fully exploiting the haulms, the project will provide an additional income stream for farmers, especially during suboptimal harvest years, and create a viable UK-based business centred on potato co-products. The project aligns with growing consumer demand for natural, bio-based products and addresses the rising global need for solanesol, which has increased from 4,000 tonnes in the early 2000s to 66,000 tonnes by 2022\. By leveraging this potential, the project will make more complete use of the potato biomass, reduce waste, and enhance economic opportunities for farmers and the cooperative members.

_To achieve clean power by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050, UK food production must move away from fossil fuels. With approximately 209,000 farm holdings in 2023, energy networks must adapt prepared to meet different future rural energy demands driven by greenhouse gas reductions and climate change adaptation._ _The Future Agriculture Resilience Mapping (FARM) project will:_ _1\. Support UK food production and security by understanding future energy requirements, transition pathways, and the associated network requirements._ _2\. Identify clear commercial, policy and planning actions for DNOs, the agricultural sector, and policy makers._

With its extensive nutrient-rich coastline and world-leading expertise in industrial biotechnology innovation, marine science, and aquaculture, Scotland has the potential to lead the UK and the western world in the development of a sustainable seaweed farming industry. Sustainably farmed seaweed can be processed in innovative biorefineries, producing multiple high-value products for food, nutraceutical, cosmetic, and biomaterial applications. However, scaling of seaweed biorefinery processing faces a significant bottleneck. Seaweed is highly perishable and freshly harvested seaweed must be bio-refined within 24 h of harvesting. Since the harvest period for farmed seaweed is only 6-8 weeks, biorefining the entire harvest in this window would require the installation of prohibitively high CAPEX biorefineries. Seaweed stabilisation should allow for year-round processing. However, the industry standard remains drying and freezing. This is not only highly energy intensive, but prohibitively expensive for sustainably farmed UK seaweed. Currently, UK-based seaweed drying and freezing costs c.£100/wet-tonne and £40/wet-tonne. With the UK having amongst the highest industrial energy costs in the world, there is a significant impetus to develop less energy-intensive and, thus, less costly stabilisation processes. Although stabilised sustainably farmed Scottish seaweed currently costs £2,500/wet-tonne (with farms at <1 tonne production scale and relying on drying/freezing for stabilisation), scaling of sustainably farmed seaweed production to c.20,000 wet-tonnes/year and reducing the stabilisation cost to <£10/wet-tonne are expected to reduce the stabilised sustainably farmed Scottish seaweed price to £570/wet-tonne, which will deliver technoeconomic biorefinery process viability. Consequently, low-cost (<£10/wet-tonne), low-energy, and environmentally benign stabilisation processes are urgently required to unlock year-round sustainably farmed seaweed supply for biorefinery processing. KALY is a Skye-based kelp farming and primary processing start-up, with a licensed 400 wet-tonne seaweed farm in Loch Bay and options for a further 3,000 wet-tonnes, harvesting 0.15 wet-tonnes in pilot-scale trials in May 2024\. Oceanium is an Oban-based seaweed offtaker, with proprietary biorefinery process technology to extract maximum value from sustainably farmed seaweed, processing 75 wet-tonnes of UK/European sustainably farmed seaweed in 2023 into commercially ready bioactives and fibre for food, nutraceutical, and cosmetic applications, with additional biomaterial (including packaging and inks) applications in development. The James Hutton Institute (JHI) is a Dundee-based crop and environmental research institute with expertise in seaweed compositional analysis. With public funding through Bio-based Manufacturing, Scotland - Rd2 CR&D, KALY, Oceanium, and JHI will develop and scale up low-cost, low-energy, environmentally benign chemical stabilisation strategies for sustainably farmed kelp that are compatible with seaweed biorefining.

This project aims to create innovative filters using live saprotrophic fungi to tackle pollutants from farming activities before they impact freshwater environments. It addresses the challenge of nitrates and phosphates, byproducts from livestock manure and agricultural fertilisers, which are essential for crop production but detrimental to water quality when they run off into rivers and streams. Our solution lies in utilising fungi which naturally thrive in nutrient-rich conditions and can absorb and store these nutrients. By developing modular filtration units filled with these fungi, the project intends to intercept pollutants at various points on farms, preventing them from reaching watercourses. These captured nutrients are then recycled as slow-release organic fertilisers, contributing to a circular economy. In essence, the project proposes a cost-effective, easy-to-use, and efficient solution for on-farm pollutant management. It not only seeks to mitigate the environmental impact of agriculture on waterways but also to enhance sustainability through the reuse of captured nutrients. The outcome will be a significant advancement in our ability to manage agricultural pollutants, supported by a valuable database of fungal species and strains for widespread application.

This project aims to enhance low-energy methodologies for producing cultivated kelp (Saccharina latissima) extracts, building on the advancements made by Algapelago and partners in the Farming Futures Low Energy Kelp (LEK) project (10087489). Working with partners Atlantic Mariculture, James Hutton Institute and UK Agri-tech Centre, our goal is to validate the efficacy of these extracts in improving plant nutrient use efficiency. Algapelago and Atlantic Mariculture are developing a novel low-energy extraction method to produce biostimulants from cultivated kelp through the Farming Futures LEK project. Demand for seaweed-derived biostimulants is expected to grow significantly as European and UK policy goals aim to reduce nutrient leaching and improve soil health, requiring a shift from chemical to biological inputs. As wild harvested biomass is restricted by licence and at capacity in Europe, this growth in supply must be met with cultivated seaweed employing circular principles and reducing impact on productive kelp ecosystems. The project aim is to validate the ability of S. latissima seaweed extract to improve plant uptake of nitrates and phosphates.

The "Digital Manure Management" project aims to revolutionise the way farmers manage manure applications by integrating cutting-edge sensor technology, real-time data analytics, and a user-friendly digital platform. **Objectives:** 1. **Ensure compliance with regulations**: Develop a software platform that helps farmers comply with manure management regulations, ensuring they avoid potential penalties. 2. **Optimise manure application timing**: Develop a method to integrate national soils data with real-time weather data and NDVI to help farmers determine field-by-field the optimal times for manure applications, ensuring maximum nutrient uptake by crops and reducing waste. 3. **Enhance decision-making with additional data****:** Test novel combinations of soil sensors and develop a method to integrate live data streams to give farmers a holistic view of their fields in real time, allowing them to make more effective decisions about manure management. 4. **Validate and demonstrate practical benefits**: Conduct field trials on partner farms to validate the effectiveness of the platform compared to decision making based on standard agricultural management data. **Partners:** The project is led by a 4th generation dairy farmer (Robert Dodds) whose search for a system to help support his decisions around manure applications led to the design of this project. The consortium Robert has brought together includes the leading dairy farm advisors in the DDC region, leading academics (SRUC and JHI), and innovative start-ups (Autonomous iOt and Soil Benchmark) who together have the skills and network to build a transformative new approach to manure management, rooted in cutting-edge sensors and easy-to-use software. CENSIS, SOSE and SEPA have all provided letters of support. **Impact**: This project is expected to develop methods that will have significant positive impacts on both soil health and agricultural productivity. By providing farmers with precise, real-time data, the project will enable more efficient and sustainable manure management practices. The expected outcomes include: * **Environmental Benefits**: Reduced diffuse pollution and improved soil health, contributing to cleaner waterways and enhanced ecosystem resilience and biodiversity. * **Economic Benefits**: Increased crop yields and quality with reduced input costs, boosting the profitability and sustainability of farming operations. * **Social Benefits**: Empowering farmers with advanced technology and knowledge, fostering a more informed and sustainable agricultural community. This initiative aligns with national priorities for sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship, positioning the UK as a leader in innovative farming practices. Through collaborative efforts and cutting-edge technology, the project aims to create a robust framework for sustainable soil management, benefiting farmers, the environment, and the broader agricultural sector.

IPMorama will improve the state of the art in variety-centric Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for important diseases in the wheat (rust pathogens), potatoes (blight) and the grain legumes soybean, pea (broomrape) and white lupin (anthracnose). IPMorama seeks to develop the infrastructure for a whole “practice ecosystem”, whereby the more efficient development of IPM-centric varieties is enabled, while at the same time developing tools and resources to efficiently exploit these in variety-centric IPM. The core innovation of IPMorama is to integrate knowledge of host resistance with the pathogen virulence landscape over space and time, to produce IPM tools (eg crowd source apps, vulnerability maps) and strategies, which will be validated at various scales and in conjunction with different agroecological practices. IPMorama will achieve these goals by enacting the following five components: 1] Understanding the genetic composition of varietal resistance in target crop/pest systems, and development of tools and resources to allow breeders to target the assembly of resistance components. 2] Understanding and mapping the landscape level distribution of the target pathogens/pests, especially in terms of their virulence against the available set of resistance and tolerance genes in varieties and breeding lines. 3] Developing specific integrated pest management practices for the optimal exploitation of pest and pathogen resistance in varieties on the basis of the first two components. 4] Developing the knowledge infrastructure for competent use of variety-centric IPM by actors across the variety-related value chain. 5] Understanding opportunities and barriers for scale-up of variety-centric IPM solutions.

FarmBalance will establish an Intelligence-as-a-Service (IntaaS) platform that merges environmental and commercial data to allow farms to increase their resilience and the value of their natural capital and monetise this through their supply chains. This will be developed using a 650-acre calibration site in Northeast Scotland, anchored to the wider Scotch whisky sector and key supply chain partners. The platform will be innovative throughout the development process -- taking a wide range of traditional and novel environmental field and remote sensing measures, validating and calibrating them with scientific input from a leading research institution, to down-select a range of key environmental derivatives and metrics based on technical validity, economic viability, practical applicability for farmers and supply chains, and scalable criteria. These will be applied to commercial data to provide actionable information for farmers. This will drive sustainable practices, resilience and wider environmental benefits, and allow farms to add value to their supply chains by passing these through to end customers in the form of price premiums based on improved security of supply and evidence of environmental benefit outcomes such as healthy soils, woodland carbon and enhanced biodiversity. FarmBalance will fuse cutting-edge sensor data to train a multi-variate machine learning model that will generate a balance of nature, soil, carbon, and agricultural indicators to allow automation and cost-effective scale-up nationally for more resilient farm management and holistic, nature-positive, land stewardship.

Healthy, high-quality potatoes are the foundation of the UK's annual 4.8M tonne potato production. For seed potatoes, the SPCS (seed potato clarification scheme) inspects the quality of seed potatoes throughout the production chain to the point of sale. Unhealthy seed may result in downgrades, reducing income, or even total rejection of crop. Loss or infection of seed can also result in dramatically reduced availability to grow ware crop and unhealthy potato plants result in reduced marketable yields affecting grower's returns and increasing wastage. Eg. diseases like late blight, known for its quick spread, and blackleg cost £50M each to the potato industry yearly. Currently, growers/surveyors of seed or ware potatoes manually comb fields, visually inspecting plants to understand field status, diseases or risks of stress. This is time consuming, laborious, specialised and error-prone; comprehensive surveying is impossible. There are many stressors that affect a field's marketable yield and overall plant health. These can include biotic (infectious diseases caused by pathogens) and abiotic, largely environmental issues that affect a plants susceptibility to biotic stress. Computer vision approaches have improved to the point where there is an immediate opportunity to adopt a precision approach to identification of plant defects. This feasibility project aims to develop an integrated computer-vision system for plant-to-field health detection using our significant strengths in machine learning and hyperspectral imagery. We aim to provide a comprehensive solution to detection of rogue and diseased plants in potato production, but as part of this proof of principle we will focus on the detection and monitoring of select biotic stressors known to cause the most problems to growers including blackleg, late-blight and viral disease, such as potato virus Y.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based mapping, derived from remotely sensed data, presents a significant opportunity within the environmental field. These technologies can replace manual digitising of features in imagery, and map larger areas to a finer granularity than is possible using traditional techniques such as Geospatial Information System (GIS) based analysis. As with any new technology however, there are reservations to its use 'on the ground'. This scepticism is to some degree warranted, due to the lack of standardised methods for comparing AI algorithms to ground results in a methodical manner. To address this challenge, a consortium, led by EOLAS Insight and partner organisation Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), will define a framework and candidate standard for direct comparison of AI / ML generated mapping algorithms. The consortium will define application-dependant standard classes for algorithms, and perform accurate ground-based mapping of baseline sites. Organisations with an active interest in the field can determine key performance metrics of their algorithms by analysing these baseline sites and comparing their results to pre-ground truthed data. This framework will be developed using nature markets as an initial use case due to the high requirement for trust in the outputs, emerging best practice, and its position as a high growth market suitable for SME involvement. The consortium, including Omanos Analytics, Agrimetrics, Highlands Rewilding and AECOM, and a working group of interested governmental departments, nature-based agencies and global investment managers, will overcome a key challenge for geospatial AI algorithm developers: user trust in the technology. This will be achieved through provision of educational resources around the use of AI generated mapping, and an established framework for measurement and comparison of algorithm quality. This will be openly published to allow developers to verify their results against pre- ground truthed data. This consortium will, through working groups, ensure a peer reviewed outcome which meets the needs of the market more widely. Through engagement and standard definition the group will mature the use of emerging AI technologies within the nature markets use case, serving as an example for wider adoption of these techniques within the environmental and geospatial sectors. By providing open and transparent methodologies for assessing the quality of AI / ML derived data products this project will increase overall trust in AI as a mechanism for mapping features in combination with remotely sensed data, benefitting the wider community.

The soft-fruit industry has changed almost beyond recognition over the past 20 years, with average yields of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries increasing 172%, 98% and 118% per ha respectively between 2000 and 2019, driven primarily by the switch to soil-less (substrate) protected cultivation. The sector is valued at £2.2bn annually with year-on-year volume growth of 7% between 2014-2018 (DEFRA Horticultural Statistics), strawberry being the major crop (£1.6bn). Availability of coir substrate is likely to become a major constraint in soft fruit production due to rising costs, transport costs and competition for supply. This project aims to demonstrate how a range of soft fruit crops grow and suppress disease in a sustainable UK produced supplemented substrate. Unlike Coir which holds excess moisture around the root zone creating over watering conditions which favour root pathogen infection and spread, this substrate has excellent water management capacity, supporting the industry need to reduce water use, fertiliser use and leaching; improving local water quality and helping to reduce its environmental footprint towards a more sustainable growing media.

Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs), i.e. the COUSINs of domesticated crops, represent a natural source of genetic variation. The COUSIN consortium recognizes the value of CWRs for agriculture, but also the challenges of their utilisation. Through the COUSIN Readiness Levels (CRLs) we will demonstrate a roadmap for the use of CWRs in breeding and farming. We will work with five flagship crops: wheat, barley, pea, lettuce and brassicas. With these exemplary crops, we demonstrate how current challenges of stakeholders from farm to fork can be overcome using CWRs in formalised and participatory breeding. The COUSIN consortium has unique CWR-related expertise, data and breeding material that allows us to cover the translational pathway from the identification of wild plants to a market ready crop in a five-year project. For each flagship crop, we identify priority traits of CWRs, design selection toolboxes and apply them in current breeding programmes in order to fulfil current and emerging stakeholders demands. Effective characterisation protocols are designed and will guide conservation of the naturally occurring functional and genetic trait diversity across Europe. Characterisation will occur in- and ex-situ through high-throughput phenotyping, chemotyping and genotyping of priority traits incl. plant-associated microbiomes. Conservation measures cover in-situ reserves and ex-situ collections with the widest possible trait diversity. For easy access of priority trait information and corresponding CWR accessions, a user-friendly data portal will be developed. All collected data will be offered for integration into national and international repositories. Through on-farm pilots and actual breeding sites realised across the European pedoclimatic regions, the value of CWRs will be demonstrated to stakeholders with direct applications for breeders and farmers to provide climate change-resilient crops as a vital means towards sustainable production systems.

The UK raspberry industry is seriously impacted by the cost of production. The price of raspberries over the last 20 years has grown by 232% (Defra Horticultural Statistics 2021). This increase in the price per kilo mainly reflects the changes in production systems (eg. programmed plant propagation, polytunnels, irrigation and fertigation, substrate use, cold chain marketing) that have been used to improve quality and yield. These highlight the technical difficulty and costs of producing high-quality raspberries which are significantly higher than for similar volumes of other fruit crops. In the last two years grower costs have risen by 25%, however retailer returns showed a 0% increase. The economics of production is therefore the most pressing concern for raspberry growers who need to reduce costs and compete with cheap imports to produce home grown high quality nutritious fruit. Low, or no profitability for UK growers would lead to either further reliance on low quality imports (already at ~ 70% of raspberries consumed) or a total failure of supply, both of which disrupt UK horticulture and the rural economy, with a downstream negative impact on consumers from lack of sustainable, tasty, nutritious fruit and those associated health benefits. The recent market pull for economical production has focused attention on breeding and genetic resources as the best option for the development of low-cost production. Identifying and then utilising appropriate traits which allow plants to grow with less input, including infrastructure, labour, irrigation, and fertigation would allow economic viability and sustainability towards net zero to benefit growers, society, the rural economy, and the environment. In this work the consortium will utilise developments in genetics/genomics, molecular breeding, transcriptomics and phenomics and with the additional goal of developing genomic prediction models, to access the required traits more rapidly and move these into elite germplasm towards variety production. Ideally, the output would be a large suite of genetic SNP markers that would link to desirable plant, fruit and other traits of importance that would allow targeted selection and breeding over significantly shorter time scales (3-5 years). This speeding up of breeding has happened to a lesser extent for individual resistance traits and more complex fruit quality traits but now needs to be carried out on a much bigger scale to meet the project goal of economic production. This would also allow more flexibility in breeding as the industry faces ever-changing circumstances.

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.

Soil-borne plant-parasitic nematodes are a biosecurity risk for global food production with an estimated annual loss of €110 billion worldwide. Root-knot nematodes (RKN) and potato cyst nematodes (PCN) rank 1 and 2 in the Top 10 of high-impact plant-parasitic nematodes with RKN alone accounting for ~5% of global crop losses. RKN and PCN are A2 quarantine pests or emerging species listed on the EPPO Alert List. The two PCN species are also included in EU Commission implementing regulation 2021/2285. Recent reports document the emergence of new RKN and PCN problems in tomato and potato cropping across Europe and beyond due to two independent drivers: global warming and genetic selection. For decades, non-specific, environmentally harmful agrochemicals have been applied to manage RKN and PCN. The increasing awareness about their negative impact prompted the phasing out of most nematicides. Consequently, there is an urgent need for novel, durable control strategies that enable adequate responses by stakeholders to prevent crop losses in the EU and beyond. NEM-EMERGE will provide a spectrum of sustainable, science-based solutions for both the conventional and organic farming sector based on the principles of IPM, including (1) optimized crop rotations schemes including cover crops, (2) tailored host plant resistances, and (3) optimal use of the native antagonistic potential of soils. Moreover, monitoring and risk assessment tools will be generated to support Plant Health Authorities in decision and policy making. To ensure the adoption and implementation of NEM-EMERGE toolsin the sector, a bottom-up co-creation process and multi-actor approach will be used based on stakeholder demands from both the conventional and organic sector. This makes NEM-EMERGE a key driver for the transition to sustainable farming in line with the Farm to Fork Strategy thereby contributing to the challenging targets set by the Green Deal.

The V-FAST (Vertical Farming And Storage Technology) project aims to demonstrate a new type of infrastructural hub at the heart of the food-energy-water nexus. Focussing on the inextricable link between food and energy, this project aims to accelerate the decarbonisation targets, and broader environmental goals, of both sectors through cooperation and making the most of interdependent relationships, within and between each domain. The co-location of a new type of pumped hydroelectric energy storage with controlled environment agriculture could open up thousands of potential sites, where the power of water can regulate the intermittency of renewable generation, to serve the needs of weather-agnostic farms growing energy-hungry crops for protein-hungry people. Food produced will feed into local supply-chains all year round at the same time as having global environmental benefits by preventing the conversion of vital ecosystems into farmland, eliminating the emissions of transport and field mechanisation, and avoiding the impact of agricultural chemicals entering local ecosystems. Over the course of this two-year feasibility study, this partnership between vertical farmers Vertegrow, energy storage innovators RheEnergise, leading agricultural researchers at the James Hutton Institute, and controlled environment agriculture members network UK Urban AgriTech, will tackle all aspects of the feasibility assessment: the cultivation of novel crops in vertical farms and the assessment of their nutritive value; the sizing, siting and integration of RheEnergise's High-Density Hydro storage; the environmental & economic sustainability of these food-energy systems; and the commercial landscape and routes from farm to plate. The completion of this comprehensive feasibility work, and any subsequent practical demonstrator project, will mark a major step towards realising the longstanding ambitions of controlled environment agriculture to contribute meaningfully to a sustainable, decarbonised food system, as well as revealing many lessons applicable to energy storage collocations in other sectors. By completing this work, the consortium will move one step closer to delivering sustainable, decarbonised food and energy directly to local communities.

The problems around food nutrition and health are manifold. Climate change is increasingly impacting UK food production the food we import in terms of yield, quality, and nutritional content variability, all of which mean reduced food security and increased costs. Allied to this is a changing demographic with the estimate that by 2035 the majority of the population will be aged 40 or older. This shift to a higher age demographic comes with a need to maintain protein and balanced micronutrient levels to guard against loss of muscle mass and strength, frailty and associated comorbidities in later life. In the last 10 years we have seen a reduction in red-meat and processed meat consumption of 13.7 and 7.0g/capita/day, respectively, with a modest uplift in white meat consumption. This, and the shift to a more varied and plant-inclusive diet, means greater effort needs to go into both providing access to a wider range of plant/crop-based foods and ensuring that these foods have good, or ideally enhanced, nutritional compositions. However, we have seen how fragile the UK food supply change is with the recent tomato/pepper/cucumber scarcity. This adds further problems to the UK's existing £6Bn annual fruit and vegetable deficit (DEFRA, 2021). Building on previous vertical farming projects wherein we identified preliminary data identifying an ability to enhance the levels of protein and micronutrients in crops, here we will further expand and develop that concept. Within a consortium of plant/crop science, human nutrition, industrial growers and leading food retailers, we will exploit these identified benefits-to-date of vertically-farmed crops to produce crops at a higher level of productivity and with defined nutritional enhancements, and using significantly less water and nutrient inputs. Here we will target the crops microgreen kale and pak choi, as established crops and explore the benefits of emergent ones, quinoa, amaranth and buckwheat, all of which have well defined and beneficial nutritional components. Allied to this a technoeconomic assessment of vertically farmed produce against conventional production systems will be undertaken to establish economic feasibility. However, these nutritionally enhanced crops have been identified by the retail partners as having significant economic potential as fresh produce and/or in processed foods.

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

Food and drink packaging (\>$300Bn/year global market) relies on plastics and a variety of chemicals now considered hazardous to health and dangerous to the environment. These chemicals usually impart barrier properties, non-stick surfaces, flame retardancy and antimicrobial activities which are required for food/drink packaging. New regulations are being introduced globally to limit/restrict use of these chemicals, meaning that new biosafe barriers for food/drink packaging need to be found, which will also support consumer demand for safe and environmentally friendly materials. This project will develop new biodegradable and biosafe materials with oil/water resistant surfaces, and flame retardant and antimicrobial properties which can be deployed to the food/drink packaging sector. Our industry partners will develop low energy environmentally friendly enzymatic processes to break down waste potato and sugar beet to extract nanocelluloses. Nanocelluloses have remarkable tensile strength, flexibility and absorbancy/barrier properties and small quantities added to paper mixes greatly improves strength and robustness. These characterised nanocelluloses produced by industry partners will have functional groups attached to them using non-hazardous chemicals and proteins, which will impart oil/water resistance, antimicrobial activities and fire retardant properties. ISO accredited analytical approaches will confirm that these functional groups have been suitably integrated into the nanocelluloses. The oil/water resistance and flame retardancy of the novel materials will be assessed, as will their antiviral and antibacterial activities. Nanocelluloses with suitable functionality will be provided to partners for incorporation into paper fibres in different ratios and dried down or applied as a coating to paper. These will be physically and chemically characterised by partners to confirm the presence of functional groups. Partners will assess the composite materials tensile strength, oil/water resistance, water vapour transmission rate, gas barrier properties, flammability, antimicrobial activities and biodegradability in soil. Materials that are the most promising will be earmarked for scaled up production assessment and also for life cycle analysis which will indicate economic and environmental costs and energy burdens of producing these materials. All project partners will protect IP prior to discussing these products with their existing customers, who are global leaders in the food/packaging industry. Further market analysis will be carried out to potentially roll out the technologies to other market sectors.

RURACTIVE aims to foster a just and sustainable transition of rural areas by developing smart, community-led, tailor-made, place based and inclusive solutions within local Multi-Actor Rural Innovation Ecosystems (RIEs) in 12 pilot area (Dynamos - Ds) in 7 EU, 2 Associated Countries and Switzerland. RURACTIVE will unlock the innovation potential of rural communities by addressing six integrated Rural Development Drivers (RDDs) – namely multimodal mobility, energy transition, agri-food and agroecology, culture and cultural innovation, health and wellbeing, nature-based and cultural tourism – and transversally integrating climate change mitigation and adaption, biodiversity and social justice and inclusion. RURACTIVE will empower rural communities to act for societal change, by making available existing knowledge around smart solutions that integrate various forms of innovation (digital and technological, technical, organizational and social, business models and financial) and enhancing rural communities' capacities and skills, by providing training, capacity building, and knowledge transfer. Implementing a methodology for RIEs establishment in 12 Ds, RURACTIVE will work towards inclusive decision-making processes for all, including vulnerable groups and people at risk of exclusion, providing RIEs with instruments and capacities to collaboratively co-develop, co-implement and co-monitor smart and community-led solutions. Also, by offering an open set of data-driven tools (Decision Support Tool, Adaptive Monitoring tool), a digital infrastructure (RURACTIVE Digital Hub), and defining a programme for external Innovators, RURACTIVE will provide a fertile ground for change in rural areas. Results will be out-scaled through knowledge exchanges and networking at EU level (open contest for Additional Ds and RURACTIVE Forum), the deployment of training and capacity building activities for further rural communities and the creation of open e-learning courses and MOOC.

Potato farmers face many technical and commercial challenges, whilst operating within extremely tight financial margins. Pests and diseases can compromise the quality of whole crops - gradual phasing out of many chemical controls leaves few options for intervention. At the same time there is a shortage of skilled labour, progressive climate change is leading to less than ideal growing conditions and time-pressed consumers are moving towards other foodstuffs that can cook in shorter times than potatoes. It is not hyperbole to suggest that the UK industry is likely to be in existential crisis unless solutions to some of these problems can be found. Legal changes to allow gene-editing (GE) in crops in England are currently going through the legislative process and GE is likely to be transformative for the potato industry, since it allows us to make specific, targeted changes to the potato genome that will address some of the problems face by the sector. In this project we will address two problem areas for which solutions are instantly achievable given currently knowledge and technology: we will make a gene edit that will prevent the discoloration that happens when potatoes bruise or when they suffer from a range of other cultural problems; we will also make an edit that will reduce the cooking times of potatoes by half. During the project period, we will also dramatically improve our understanding of one of the UK's most loved potatoes, Maris Piper, by undertaking genome sequencing and assembly, and we will also study the natural variability associated with genes controlling other traits. Combined, these pieces of work will allow us to create a knowledge-based pipeline so we can combine gene edits to iterate towards a "super potato".

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The overall aim of ECHO is to engage EU citizens in soil health increasing their knowledge, by generating new data on the health status of EU soils to complement existing soil mapping and soil monitoring in EU Member States, and awareness on the ecological and societal importance of soils. ECHO is based on 3 main principles: 1) to engage citizens motivating them to protect and restore soils; 2) to empower citizens by providing knowledge and an active role in data collection; 3) to enable citizens to directly participate in decisionmaking on soil issues. ECHO will achieve this through co-creation with target societal groups as a cornerstone of delivering a step change in increased soil literacy in society across Member States. ECHO will develop tailor-made citizen science initiatives across EU Member States taking into account different land-uses, soil types and biogeographical regions as well as stakeholder needs, overcoming the recognised challenges related to age, culture, background and language (28 initiatives with 16500 sites assessed). Our ambition is to actively involve and engage citizens building the capacities and knowledge to promote soil stewardship across EU and foster social change through trust and improved understanding of soil. ECHO will create ECHOREPO, a long-term open access repository, fed with citizen science data to be exploited not only by scientists but also by the general public and end-users. This will leverage and provide added-value to existing data and other relevant soil monitoring initiatives. ECHO´s consortium consists of 16 participants with 9 leading universities and research centres, 5 SMEs, and 2 Foundations. The participants from small companies and foundations, as business and civil society representatives, are complementary to the soil and social sciences experts of academic partners and crucial to achieve the ambitious goals of ECHO.

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.

SusProt is unique in creating an on-farm platform to exploit currently unharvested food-grade broccoli biomass and extract food-grade protein from it along with other valuable co-products. The on-farm application and exploitation of currently unutilised broccoli biomass offers significant economic and emission reduction opportunities. Success here will see the platform application extended to other unused primary crop food-safe biomass

Potato growing uses intensive soil cultivation and very large inputs of inorganic nutrients, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. Large amounts of energy are also used in cooled store to prevent post-production sprouting prior to consumer use. This result in continuous degradation of farm soil organic matter, and large emissions of CO2 and N2O, two major greenhouse gases. TRIP-Transformative Reduced input in potatoes, is a 36 months research program, will develop a regenerative method to address all of the above problems, and provide cost-competitive solutions to potato farmers. TRIP- is based on reduced/no-tillage using farm waste as mulch, innovative plant nutrition approaches, and use of novel low-input potato cultivars having natural long dormancy, and integrated pest management approaches. It will increase soil organic matter, lower needs of chemical inputs (fertilizer, pesticides), reducing also the associated contamination of water, with positive effects on wildlife and bioversity. TRIP- will also contribute to Net Zero. It will demonstrate that using regenerative methods for potato growing will both reduce the GHG emissions and build soil organic matter and its sequestration of carbon. It will provide substantial saving in nitrogen fertilisers, fuel for machinery and for cooled storage used in potato production (major components of the potato production carbon footprint), which will also contribute to Net Zero. TRIP 3-year project outputs will include data on productivity and GHG emissions for combination of cultivation methods and a breeding strategy. Outputs will be reported at demonstration and conferences.

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

To provide pharmaceutical manufacturers with bespoke, consistent raw material to support reduction in costs of cannabis-based drugs, and improve patients' access to treatment.

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To develop novel tools for more efficient marker-assisted breeding in octoploid plant species; accelerating improved cultivar release of commercial fruit varieties.

SYS-SENS is a multidisciplinary effort designed to target one of the key challenges facing society - that of ensuring sustainable food production for future generations whilst reducing the negative effects on the environment. Over the last decade the effects of climate change, and in recent months COVID-19, have highlighted the incredibly fragile nature of our current food production operations and served as yet another reminder that there is a real and present necessity to optimise our food production systems and accelerate efforts towards decarbonisation and sustainability which will in turn boost local food production. It has become evident that we need to shorten our supply chains if we are to help decarbonise the food supply chains and also to increase our food self-sufficiency. Controlled environment agriculture (CEA), including vertical farming, has advanced significantly over the last 5-10 years delivering major savings in water and nutrient use compared to existing crop production and, with the advances in energy sourcing and management, looks set to be a sustainable route to producing a significant proportion of our food and reduce the reliance on just-in-time imports, valued at £14bn in 2018 (Controlled Environment Agriculture. Savills 2019). This project brings together experts in crop biology, phenotyping, controlled environment agriculture/vertical farms, photonics, remote sensing and product delivery as a first step to designing a product for the accurate and non-invasive measurement of crop stresses and their relationship to food nutritional content/maturity and production optimisation. These relationships will form the bases of sensor-derived algorithms that will, through integration with the vertical farm data management system, facilitate continuous produce optimisation, increased productivity and reduced carbon footprint. Here a pilot trial will be undertaken in a state-of-the-art commercial vertical farm demonstrator (IGS) to determine value in an operational controlled environment agriculture setting. Proof of the concept and subsequent commercialisation of the sensor will allow (UK and global) CEA food producers to optimise their operations leading to lower energy, fertiliser & water use whilst simultaneously delivering higher nutritional value foods to the consumer.

In this project we are building a novel pest/disease forecasting service that uses machine learning 'ensemble' techniques to imbue highly localised predictive power and wide pest-crop-geography application potential. This broad-spectrum approach to forecasting is highly innovative and has the potential to drive synergistic improvements in the usage of inputs across all of the UK's most important crops. This innovation will drive a reduction in agro-chem usage, increase in crop yields and reduce the carbon footprint of UK agriculture.

The UK's potato industry is valued at £778M (5.37Mt); the majority of potatoes are produced in England, with growers relying on high-quality, disease-free seed, which is primarily purchased from a specialised group of growers in Scotland. Whilst the Scottish climate is perfect for minimising many potato disease, it can encourage blackleg disease; the most important bacterial disease of potatoes (£50M p.a. UK losses). This project focusses on a sustainable, highly-specific technology based on natural-bacterial enemies (bacteriophage) to target blackleg, developed with Scottish seed growers and aims to engage with England's wider potato industry to demonstrate and enable farm-based blackleg solutions.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragility of global food supply chains. Countries urgently seek a healthy, base level of food security and self-sufficiency at a time when agricultural land is depleted, the population is growing, and climate-related weather events are increasing. As a result, new, dynamic and groundbreaking collaborative solutions are required on a global level. This is not a single-nation issue. In the UK, self-sufficiency is at around 50% for fresh produce, but has been in decline for 30 years. In Singapore, where over 90 percent of the food supply is imported from over 170 countries, the country is vulnerable to fluctuations in food supply and prices. As a result, the Singaporean government announced a series of strategic policy initiatives, including the increase of self-production by 30% by 2030 through investment in high technology urban farms, among other measures. This project responds to this urgent need, targeting crop-based foods and herbs -- key components of the Singaporean national diet -- via an innovative combination of vertical farming (VF) and high-tech greenhouse techniques. With diverse expertise and customer bases, its partners are uniquely placed to deliver a joined-up coherent approach to the problem and develop a leading-edge turnkey solution fit for the Singaporean market: LIVFRESH (LF) is a Singapore-based farming company with a mission to revolutionise access to fresh, locally grown crafted produce through high precision controlled environment (HPCE) farming methods. Liberty Produce (LP) is a UK AgriTech company driving the sector towards greater sustainability, efficiency and security by building leading-edge TCEA farming technology that enables the growth of local produce year-round. The James Hutton Institute (JHI) is Europe's premier agriculture and environment institute. Republic Polytechnic, Singapore (RP) provides agricultural/horticultural expertise with site/facilities for installing, testing and developing the solution. This two-year project will install a shipping-container-based farm at RP for JHI, RP and LP to run trials and understand optimal conditions for crops needed by the Singaporean market. The team will investigate how combined-system growing can provide optimum efficiency for crops for the domestic Singaporean market, and determine how to build a fully optimised combined system. The second year will focus on commercial rollout, with the installation of a farm at LF, based on the specifications identified during Year 1\. Additional research at the RP farm facility will concern growing high value crops within TCEA to fulfil further aspects of Singaporean domestic needs.

Protected structures such as greenhouses, polytunnels and indoor farms are used in the production of high-value fruit and vegetable crops. They facilitate increased crop yields and quality by altering and maintaining environmental factors such as light, temperature, humidity and pest pressure. For countries based in northern latitudes these production systems are critical to maintaining longer growing seasons and for local production of many high-value and commercially significant crops including strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Despite their benefits, considerable risks remain for growers in this industry with high operational costs and economic returns that are sensitive to changes in price and yield. Technological solutions are required to overcome the challenges of productivity and sustainable production. This project is designed to address these obstacles through a collaborative multi-disciplinary approach. By bringing together farmers, technologists and researchers, we can develop a 'hydrobubble' generation technology that will deliver significant benefits across the sector. This technology promotes plant growth in hydroponic systems by up to 30%, through the injection of oxygen-rich micro and nano-sized bubbles into the irrigation water. The physical properties of these bubbles means they are negatively charged and electrostatically attracted to plant roots, where they cluster to constantly supply oxygen to the plant. This has proven benefits to plant yield and studies have reported marked improvement in both root development, fresh weight and the synthesis of specific plant biocompounds in a number of crop varieties. This project will evaluate the feasibility of this new technology in three protected crop systems (glasshouse, polytunnel and vertical farming). It will establish whether the application of micro-nanobubbles can: * Increase plant yield; * Improve crop quality; * Boost nutritional content; * Reduce pathogen load; * Contribute to the target of net-zero emissions from agriculture through the utilisation of captured CO2 in the bubbling process. This project will focus on delivering user-driven, effective and low-cost solutions. It will build on previously published work in the area, capabilities in technology development, crop knowledge and data analysis. This technology will enable increased productivity and profitability from protected crop production systems and enable an economic shift, facilitating indoor production from vertical farms to enter mainstream consumer markets. These benefits are highly exportable, with the potential to strengthen the UK agri-technology proposition and move food production towards a sustainable and productive net-zero emissions future.

Due to emergent pandemic threats the global use of personal protection equipment (PPE) has hugely increased (in particular face masks). Most of this PPE is single use, contains plastics, is not easily recyclable and generally is disposed of via landfill or discarded into the environment. It is estimated that if each person in the UK uses a single disposable mask each day for a year this would result in 66, 000 tonnes of contaminated plastic waste (which would be a reservoir of infection) and have ten-fold more of a climate change impact than reusable masks. Interestingly, most of these materials are prone to "wetting out" and are poorly absorbant which raises transmission risks, and moreover they lack the requisite antiviral/antibacterial activities required for robust protection. There are however very few antiviral PPE technologies readily available in the public domain and those that are suffer from complex manufacturing methods, high expense, poor reusability, poor washability and rapidly lose their antiviral activities. There is now a pressing need to develop completely new PPE materials which confer safety and comfort by being highly absorbant, breathable and can actively sequester viruses and kill them and have potent antimicrobial activity. It is also crucial that these PPE materials are made from existing waste streams, be multiuse, re-washable, compostible, recyclable and cheap; reducing the huge environmental burden and supporting the emergent bioeconomy for new products. This project will produce novel PPE materials (in particular face masks) which satisfies all these criteria and address a major market and environmental weakness. This project will produce unrivalled novel ISO validated multiuse, washable, environmentally friendly PPE materials which have potent antiviral activities, while also considering antibacterial properties since warm and moist PPE masks may support bacteria. This work builds on our existing publications and patent portfolios with industry partners and also helps drive our novel products to the face mask market and beyond, while also enabling us to identify interesting antiviral/antibacterial properties which will later be investigated to unpick new potential pathogen control mechanisms.

_Phytophthora infestans_ is the pathogen that caused the Great Irish Potato Famine and today over 170 described species of _Phytophthora_ cause crop disease on a global scale, costing commercial crop industries billions of dollars. The UK fruit industry and raspberry particularly has been decimated by _Phytophthora_ root rot (PRR) with an 80% reduction in field production leading to a smaller pot based short term industry[][0] supported by extensive fruit imports. Methods to control infection and spread are limited by current legislation that limit the use of prophylactic fungicides and increase the importance of novel control methods based on host resistance, growing media and watering. _Phytophthora_ _rubi_ and _P. fragariae_ are PRRs which spread through plant propagation, growth media and water flow in plantations. Manipulating the physical, chemical and biological properties of the growth medium has the potential to play a key role in inhibiting PRR. Commercial plant growth substrates can be designed specifically to meet a crops individual needs with regards to nutrient requirement, water management and grower preferences. Manipulating the growing media's physical, chemical and biological properties can lead to a stronger healthier root and plant system, while also limiting and actively suppressing the growth and spread of harmful root pathogens, such as PRR. Specific additives have previously been incorporated into growing media to control and prevent other root pathogens and pests such as Vine Weevil, _Fusarium_ spp. and _Pythium_ spp. A recent JHI study identified multiple responses triggered in a PRR resistant raspberry plant upon challenge with _P._ _rubi_, including a mechanism, which has the potential to improve a plants resistance to PRR. The growth medium can be improved by the manipulation of these plant-derived chemical signals that are normally induced upon pathogen challenge in resistant cultivars, to boost the immune capabilities of susceptible cultivars. Using molecular methods such as gene expression, genetic markers and fluorescent pathogen cultures we can track disease development in the root-zone environment in different growing media substrate formulations. The innovative range of growth substrate additives developed in this project will stimulate raspberry root growth signal to improve the root system under a controlled irrigation regime and secondly actively inhibit the growth and spread of root pathogens. Establishment of optimal raspberry growing conditions integrated with early pathogen detection and control of PRR spread will transform raspberry agronomy, maximising yield and securing the UK soft fruit industry with application to other crops worldwide. [0]: #_msocom_1

In Kenya improving food security and nutrition is one of the key pillars in the country’s development policy. Potatoes are the second most important food crop in Kenya and improvements in production efficiency is an important route to achieving development goals. The crop is grown by 800,000 small-holders while current seed production stands at <5% of that required even though smallholder adopters of certified seed typically increase yields by 3-5 times with consequent significant positive impact. Airponix (APX) have proven a new game-changing aeroponic crop production system that can produce 3-6 times the minitubers/m2 per year versus the current state of art aeroponic system. The advances of APX are in the use of new fogging systems (as opposed to using mists or sprays) based on patented technology. The system will be optimised at scale & detailed cost and benefit analyses will be carried out between the two systems. And if it can be proven to produce seed tubers sized directly under aeroponic cultivation economically without the need to multiply in the field, which is the constraint to producing more, it will significantly increase the livelihoods of up to 800k smallholder farmers in Kenya without them doing anything different, are likely to increase their crop yields 5-fold.

Potato is the second most important crop in Kenya and is grown for food and as a source of income. The vast majority of growers in Kenya are smallholder farmers. Pests and diseases cause huge losses to crop production across the world, including Kenya. Potato production in Kenya is being seriously impacted by an emerging introduced pathogen, the Potato Cyst Nematode (PCN). This proof of concept proposal aims to demonstrate that potato cultivars that combine the quality traits favoured by Kenyan growers and the women who are responsible for the majority of food preparation in rural Kenya, with resistance to the predominant PCN species present in Kenya, represent a valid target for breeding programmes and subsequent commercialisation.

To develop novel animal feeds by adding edible UK seaweeds to improve their nutritional status, health and value. To reduce reliance on imported ingredients and produce novel bespoke feeds with specific end-uses.

"Potatoes are the UK's largest vegetable category, producing 5-6 million tonnes p.a. valued at approximately £1.1bn. Production is relatively stable but prices and supply are volatile, with underlying issues including weather effects and related to these, disease. Bacterial pathogens of potatoes in particular are responsible for substantial losses through disease, leading to damage and failure to meet market specifications. Of particular importance to the UK and wider European industry, especially for high-grade seed production is blackleg (caused mainly by _Pectobacterium_ bacteria); responsible for \>£50M UK total losses p.a. and £750M worldwide. Blackleg is transmitted through the seed-multiplication system and is a major cause of seed downgrading and rejections (at an estimated cost of £100/tonne), together with downstream losses from tuber soft rot across the wider industry sectors. This project builds on previous Innovate UK research in which combinations of novel, highly-specific and safe bacteriophage (naturally-occurring antimicrobials) have been formulated to target blackleg pathogens. These studies have concluded that the main commercial value of the technology is working with the high-grade seed industry, attempting to minimise seed contamination, safeguarding seed potato health for the industry downstream and adding a competitive advantage to the seed producers to compete for larger and new export markets, both within and outside of the EU (particularly post Brexit). Previous work also concluded that the assessment of blackleg controls should be a two-fold approach, recording both diseased plants and also, bacterial contamination of harvested tubers as a measure of their likelihood of transmitting disease to subsequent generations. Key objectives of the proposed project are to follow successive generations of high-grade seed (from clean, field-generation 1 stocks), applying bacteriophage treatments both at planting (targeting seed contamination) and foliar applications throughout the growing season (targeting environmental disease sources). Also, work will be carried out to modify and optimise the initial bacteriophage mix to take into account new, emerging blackleg pathogens. The existing business-led consortium from project 101907 will be further strengthened by two new research partners (James Hutton Institute and University of Leicester), bringing innovative approaches to inform questions of both bacteriophage specificity and mode-of-action. The project addresses a very timely and innovative opportunity given the impact of the disease on the industry. The Lead Applicant has already made significant progress in exploiting the technology to date and the proposed project would further de-risk the technology, allowing the consortium to maximise commercialisation opportunities post project as effectively as possible."

To develop the capacity to control plant-microbe interactions within the novel growth system to optimise crop production by reducing waste through spoilage whilst generating a risk framework for ensuring future food safety compliance.

Throughout their life cycle, plants are subjected to many adverse environmental conditions including low light levels and periods of drought or extreme temperatures which can dramatically affect plant survival and limit productivity. In order to cope with such stresses, plants adjust metabolically and physiologically. Unanticipated variation in crop development is already in evidence in a range of crop varieties resulting in yield instability with significant negative impacts on the rural economy, environment and wellbeing. Cherry and blueberry are prime examples where, depending on season, a condition known as Cherry June Drop can occur where unripe fruit fall from the tree to excessive levels, drastically reducing yield. Similarly in blueberry widely varying yield is achieved depending on season with factors such as bud initiation being important. Currently no methods exist to understand when and how a plant's development has been disrupted or to characterise the key environmental signals responsible. The lack of knowledge in these two areas severely limits the capacity for active crop management to optimise yield or to breed for future environmental resilience. This work will use a field based plant and environmental monitoring approach to develop environmental models of blueberry bud initiation and cherry June Drop. We will attempt to identify signals that arise from the plants short-term responses to environmental conditions ('sensing'), to identify the point(s) at which the plant's development leads to the unwanted phenotype (excessive June Drop or excessive vegetative bud development). Blueberry and Cherry are key crops with great potential for UK production but which currently supply only 7% and 5% respectively of the market with UK fruit. Current expansion particularly in cherry is presently impeded by this unpredictable developmental phenotype, 'June Drop', which can lead to fruit losses of 80%. In blueberry, yield varies as much as 50% across seasons. Project outputs will allow, for the first time, the ability to carry out in-field environmental monitoring and crop phenotyping to understand environmental factors controlling crop production and develop bespoke crop management systems that will mitigate the effect of environmental variation and ensure future crop yield stabilisation and for cherry to encourage new plantations to reduce imports. The outputs would also have application to a wide range of other crops where other phenotypic disorders can be detected and methods developed for mitigation and also for plant breeding where varieties can be selected based on imaging signals of plant responses to environmental conditions.

To transfer fundamental knowledge, around the novel fruit crop Honeyberry, into commercial practice through the development of expertise which will have implications in new fruit product development and the creation of new products for customers.

Recent press reports on the problem of acrylamide in food products, observing the potential linkage between it and cancer in humans are common. The increasing nature of these articles serves to raise public awareness. The food industry and industry bodies have acted on these jutifiable concerns and have produced technical guidance to manufacturers to reduce acrylamide levels. Safe limits are not yet specified, leaving it to the industry to achieve ALARA as the target. This is clearly a moving target as technology develops and new opportunities arise and the onus is on the industry to achieve reductions. One of the real challenges faced has been the complexity of the supply chain / manufacturing process and the inability to measure acrylamide other than with considerable delay in a laboratory. This project will investigate approaches for growing potatoes in a manner that reduce their potential to produce acrylamide. It will also derive better online measurement / estimation and how information from the supply chain and manufacturing line can be used to reduce levels of acrylamide in manufactured potato products. Subsequently the project will deliver improved measurement and control providing increased confidence to the consumer in the safety of potato and potato-derived products alongside bread and cereals.

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

There is a need to develop a greater understanding of factors affecting the speed and proficiency of blueberry plant establishment and thereafter maintenance of yield. Bushes do not become fully productive until they are between five and seven years old requiring a significant financial layout from growers before any expected return to profit. A significant knowledge gap exists regarding the inter- relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plant establishment of naturally occurring and commercially grown Vaccinium species. This project aims to identify species- specific fungal communities to assess their ability to colonise a range of highbush blueberry cultivars and their affect on establishment and plant productivity. This project is the first step in developing a commercial product based on symbiotic fungal isolates for the propagation industry and growers, which would enhance establishment and growth of blueberry plants.

Fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds account for at least 48,000 cases of food poisoning in the UK each year (1). As many fresh produce products are eaten raw and a low infectious dose results in human infection, these products can represent a signficant threat to consumers. Anacail have previously demonstrated that their in-pack ozone generation technology can significantly improve the shelf life of berry and tomatoes. Ozone is a powerful but short-lived germicidal agent which can reduce the numbers of microbes on food, including food poisoning bacteria such as Escherichia coli O157:H7, in seconds. With the Anacail system ozone is generated from the conversion of oxygen within the pack. The inherent instability of ozone means it quickly degrades back to oxygen within the pack. However in this interim time it is able to reduce the amount of potentially harmful microbes present on food, as well as reduce mould spores to improve the quality of the food product. We now want to validate that the technology can reduce a variety of food spoilage microbes naturally present on tomatoes and berries, as well as determine whether in-pack ozone can reduce a Norovirus surrogate and human pathogens, E. coli and Salmonella enterica on food products which have been associated with these pathogenic organisms in the past.

In the food and drink industry ethyl carbamate is a strictly regulated compound. To ensure minimal levels are produced during whisky distillation, only EPH non-producing barley varieties are recommended to the industry, EPH being the precursor for ethyl carbamate. The James Hutton Institute (JHI) in Dundee and the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI) in Edinburgh are teaming up to develop a new molecular marker that can be used by breeders to ensure all newly released commercial distilling barley varieties are EPH non-producers. We will use state-of-the-art sequencing approaches to develop a high throughput assay that can be fully integrated into commercial breeding programmes. Increasing the integrity and throughput will allow highly efficient screening, increasing potential to assay more individuals from diverse germplasm sources, earlier in the selection process. Ultimately this will result in a greater number of suitable candidate barley varieties, with higher agronomical and processing qualities for malting and distilling industries.

To enhance the functional health beneficial properties of berries improving their capacity to limit ‘lifestyle diseases’ such as obesity and diabetes thereby providing a healthier choice for consumers.

To develop, test and validate revolutionary high intensity crop growing systems that will produce consistent, high quality products year round with a limited environmental footprint.

In the UK, tuber greening is directly linked to 116,000 tonnes of household potato waste each year with an associated estimated loss of £60m p.a. to UK retailers. In field losses due to tuber greening also cost the industry £37m p.a. Greening is a significantly negative factor in consumer purchases where a 1% increase in sales is worth £3m p.a. to producers. This project brings together partners that span the food chain from production, through packaging, to major supermarkets who will work with academic researchers to develop solutions to reduce tuber greening. Photobiological experiments will identify the conditions and target genes for light-induced tuber greening informing the design of prototype packaging film to reduce greening during storage and in store. Recently developed potato genetic approaches will be used to identify markers for genes associated with reduced greening providing the foundation of a longer term strategy to produce new non-greening potato varieties.

The benefits of precision farming (PF) - dividing land into management zones according to soil characteristics - has been proven to yield better results when compared to conventional farming. The perceived high entry cost into PF has long been a barrier to entry for some smaller arable farmers. This project aims to make the financial entry into PF more affordable whilst not compromising on the high resolution data required to produce meaningful soil management zones. This large-scale collaborative project aims to integrate satellite data with the UK’s most comprehensive soil datasets to produce a ‘precision soil map’. The resultant map would present an economically viable alternative to the current labour intensive methodology of soil surveying and represents a very exciting opportunity for arable and vegetable farming to embrace precision farming. Growers will be able to increase yields with lower input costs and reduced environmental impact.

Low cost Hyperspectral Crop Camera (HCC). A consortium from a broad range of disciplines have come together to develop a revolutionary low cost crop camera that could potentially allow farmers to improve crop yield, use less fertiliser, use less pesticide and spot pests and diseases earlier. The project will be led and coordinated by Wideblue Limited - a developer and manufacturer of specialist cameras. The project will also call on the skills of the the James Hutton Institutes expertise in crop nutrition and monitoring, the University of Strathclyde's Hyperspectral Imaging Centre, the University of the West of Scotland's Institute of Thin Films, Sensors and Imaging and Galloway & MacLeod's intelligent agriculture division.

Leaf scald, caused by the fungal pathogen Rhynchosporium commune is one of the most damaging diseases of UK barley. Current control strategies rely heavily on fungicides, but the most effective and sustainable way to protect crops is to develop new cultivars that incorporate and express effective built-in resistance. In order to do this, we need to, simultaneously introduce multiple, complementary resistance genes into a single line. This is extremely hard to do if traditional selection methods are used. This project will translate cutting edge advances in barley genetics to deliver innovative breeding methods along with DNA markers that are needed to achieve this objective. These resources and knowledge will be used by the commercial partner (KWS UK Ltd) to produce the next generation of highly resistant barley varieties that will protect yield and quality for growers and end users of barley grain.

Providing sufficient food to feed an increasing global population is challenging given limited resources. Soil is a key component of food production providing nutrition and organic matter. However, modern methods of crop production have resulted in degraded soil leading to reduced yields. This contributes to the so-called yield gap, the difference between yield in optimal conditions to that actually achieved. This project focusses on developing a test for soil quality that uses measures of soil biology, chemistry and physics. We profile soil nematode community DNA, similar to genetic fingerprinting, to inform the status of soil quality. Whereas soil chemical and physical measures are snapshot measures in time e.g. hours, nematode data is a reflection of weeks/months. The consortium partners will develop a tool for farmers to be used in a precision agriculture framework to identify fields in need of soil quality improvement.

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

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

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

Potato late blight is one of the world's most destructive crop diseases, with £3.5Bn annual losses globally in an industry suffering stagnant yields for the last decade. This project will develop a rapid acoustic biosensor device for in-field identification of air-borne sporangia of Phytophthora Infestans (causal agent of late blight), to meet the compelling need for improved disease management & control. Soil Essentials (SE), a precision-farming SME, together with University of Cambridge (UC), the James Hutton Institute (JHI), Mylnefield Research Services (MRS) & Syngenta (SG), will develop an integrated diagnostic tool for early pathogen detection, by coupling low-cost, antibody-coated acoustic sensing consumables with a proven spore-trap. The proposed innovation, enabled only by the interdisciplinary convergence of state-of-the art acousto-electronics, smart materials, biochemistry, late blight epidemiology, advanced ICT & precision agriculture, will enable optimised disease control, reducing potato crop waste & fungicide costs, improving marketable yield & quality. As a platform technology, it can be easily adapted to detect other crop & livestock pathogens for wider agricultural impact.

The withdrawal of numerous pesticides under Directive 91/414/EEC and subsequent amendments is central to promoting low pesticide-input farming in EU Member States. Furthermore, EU-wide standards for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are being developed that will become mandatory from 2014 relying on adoption of alternative methods to control pests and diseases. The UK potato industry is particularly vulnerable to a reduction of pesticide use with a likely loss of production across market sectors valued at > £520M. Thus new and novel methods of disease management need to be developed and integrated into IPM strategies. In this project, we wish to explore whether using cutting edge unmanned aerial vehicle optical platforms it is possible to identify a number of diseases in potato before visual symptoms occur in the field. If successful, this will allow accurate mapping of disease in the field thus allowing targeted application of pesticide or equivalent to manage disease at an early stage. Consequently, this will yield a more efficient production process with fewer inputs resulting in significant environmental benefits and a reduction in production wastage due to disease pressure.

Arraying of chemical groups and functional peptides on the surface of engineered, safe (non-infectious) virus-like nanoparticles (VNPs), permits the formation of biomimetic multifunctional and highly reactive nanoscale structures. This project seeks to develop the next generation functional 3D nanomaterials we via the incorporation of such multifunctional VNPs into a low cost nanocellulose matrix which has excellent mechanical characteristics, thus allowing production of innovative functional and catalytic nanoreactors, coatings, filters and other devices

The maintenance of global food security, mediated by sustainable intensification of agriculture, is a recognised global issue and the effective management of plant disease is critical to productive cropping of agricultural land. Potato is the third most important food crop globally, with late blight control being a major challenge estimated to cost £3.5billion in losses per annum. In the UK, disease control alone costs £55M per annum on average to the industry. This project seeks to demonstrate a new prototype device that will sample airborne spores of P. infestans (the cause of late blight) and Alternaria species (the cause of early blight) in the field, automatically process the sample, quantify DNA by fluorescence and relay results by mobile phone text message. The aim is to improve current weather-based disease risk models and predictions for late blight, resulting in enhanced decision making ability for growers with respect to fungicide choice and application and therefore more efficient resource use.

This project will provide UK oat producers with world leading agronomic ‘tools’ to maximise grower returns and capitalise on the increasing demand for food grade oats. The objectives are 1) Develop and validate algorithms for translating visual / spectral sensor data from Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into quantifiable crop parameters to enable growers to optimise management for yield and quality across fields; 2) develop an Oat Crop Model and associated decision support tools; 3) develop an Oat Growth Guide which will provide a reference to assess crops status against key development bench-marks. Focused dissemination of these innovative tools will increase average yields by at least 1t/ha, contribute to sustainable intensification, reduce supply risk for millers, reduce imports, catalyse product innovation & consumer access to healthy grains and stimulate milled product export.

This project addresses the effects of climate change in the UK on blackcurrant production, where the trend towards warmer winters has adversely affected dormancy break and subsequent crop yields and quality, substantially reducing profitability. The use of existing dormancy-breaking treatments, developed for other perennial crops, will be assessed for their efficacy in blackcurrant, their use optimised, and their mode of action evaluated. Best practice guidelines for growers will be developed. Additionally, models predicting responses to the chilling environment for different varieties will be established, and this information will be used to direct the use of dormancy-breaking treatments to improve yield and quality.

New crop varieties that can tolerate abiotic/biotic stresses are essential for maintaining crop productivity in current and future growing environments. Breeding stress-tolerant crop varieties, however, is limited by the precision and throughput of plant phenotyping. This project will develop and apply a novel tractor-mounted platform for precise and high throughput field phenotyping of plant stress responses of soft fruit crops using IRT and hyperspectral imaging. It is proposed also to assess the value of canopy imaging as an indirect indicator of abiotic and biotic root stresses. Soft fruit crops such as raspberry can experience multiple stresses in field conditions, including poor soil conditions, variable water availability, and attack by root rot pathogens and root-feeding vine weevil larvae. Phenotyping data will be linked to genetic markers to facilitate breeding of productive, stress-resistant soft fruit varieties. This novel high-throughput phenotyping platform will accelerate the development and release of productive high quality soft fruit varieties that perform well in sustainable reduced input cropping and is expected to be valuable for routine monitoring of crops and stress diagnosis.

Modern crop breeding aims to incorporate useful properties (traits) from related wild plants into the varieties that consumers are more familiar with. This project aims to develop a set of biological tools that will make it an easier, cheaper and faster procedure to identify the genes in the wild plants that are responsible for producing these desired traits. The tools will be based on a common plant virus, Tobacco rattle virus (TRV), that has already been shown to be adaptable for this purpose. The project will construct improved versions of the TRV-based tools, and will then test these new tools in a range of vegetable crop plants (including pepper and tomato). Beneficial plant genes identified using these tools will be selected for incorporation into the crop improvement programmes of Enza Zaden.

The CropForecast project proposes to improve crop disease forecasting using high resolution earth observation data, accurate digital elevation models and local weather data. Such improvements will increase the efficiency, sustainablility, and profitability of crop production.The current approach to crop disease forecasting has limited spatial resolution and can only generally provide forecasts at a multiple field scale. The proposed approach would allow more precise forecasting at a sub-field level to be achieved. The initial focus will be to track, predict and ultimately limit the spread of potato late blight (Phytophthora infestans) in the UK. The proposed system will give farmers an early warning system that highlights the risk to their crops based on incoming weather patterns, detailed elevation and aspect information and remotely sensed data from satellites using sophisticated modelling techniques.

To develop produce with enhanced healthy attributes, yields and shelf -life in produce using advanced agronomic techniques and use improved produce to develop a high health, branded, vegetable juice.

To develop new products for agricultural pesticide reduction through robust enhancement of crop health by identification and development of novel 'resistance activators'.

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