Vaccines made using algae are being developed to keep fish free from disease and help protect the UK’s aquaculture industry. The project is one of 12 to receive a total of £5.1 million which will further research to address challenges for aquaculture.
The World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease (WRLFMD) marked 60 years of being the global centre of expertise in the diagnostics and surveillance of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) with a two-day symposium on Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 November. The Pirbright Institute, home to the WRLFMD, welcomed visitors from across the globe for a series of talks that showcased the WLRFMD’s contribution to science and its commitment to protect the world’s livestock from foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).
When the first flowers appeared around 130 million years ago, it marked a revolution in plant reproduction. But it’s sometimes easy to forget how sophisticated they are, and how important they are to our everyday lives.
An ongoing outbreak of swine fever in China – home to more than half the world’s hogs – has led to a cull of more than 24,000 pigs. Pork is the principal source of dietary protein in China, the Korean peninsula and in many regions of Southeast Asia, and this highly contagious disease, capable of killing any pig it infects, is a significant threat to livelihoods across the region.
Scientists from The Pirbright Institute’s Vaccine Differentiation group have recently returned from Chennai in India, where they conducted a mass peste des petits ruminants (PPR) vaccination campaign and awareness programme. The trip marked the end of a four year collaborative project that has successfully uncovered important details about the PPR virus and generated tools to help eradicate the disease.
With no vaccine to aid the prevention and control of African swine fever, researchers at The Pirbright Institute are joining forces with other research organisations and policy makers to help limit the damage caused by this deadly pig disease. The recent outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in China represents a significant development in the progression of the disease.
Funding has been granted to nine important projects to improve sustainable agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. SASSA is a £10 million project to address research challenges relating to the sustainable intensification of agricultural systems.
Scientists have identified gene expression responses that may help understand why some salmon are more resistant to sea lice than others. Researchers from The Roslin Institute and the University of Chile investigated how expression of genes in salmon skin respond to infestation with sea lice, and how this varies between resistant and susceptible animals.
The complete sequence of the huge wheat genome is published this week, and the enormous dataset will accelerate innovation in breeding resilient and disease resistant crops to feed a growing global population. Wheat is the most widely-cultivated crop on Earth. It provides more protein than meat in the human diet, and contributes about a fifth of calories consumed by humans.
Researchers at the University of Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Sciences discover a new gene which improves yields of cereal crops such as wheat and rice, using less fertilizer. “Elite crops” can be grown to maintain their current high yields with less fertilizer, according to a paper published online this week in Nature.
The first funding from a £90 million fund that aims to revolutionise how food is produced and dramatically reduce its environmental impact launches later this month. The Transforming Food Production Challenge, part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy, will bring together the UK’s world-leading agri-food sector with robotics, satellite, data and digital technologies and artificial intelligence to make the UK a world leader in the precision farming techniques needed to make sure the planet is able to feed a population of nine billion people by 2050.
Researchers at The Pirbright Institute in collaboration with partners at the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory on Plum Island USA, have shown that foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) can be detected in milk samples using a method that is potentially sensitive enough to identify the virus in pooled milk stored in bulk tanks or milk tankers. These encouraging results indicate that testing of milk samples could contribute to disease surveillance both during and after outbreaks.
For the first time in the UK, Atlantic salmon will be fed a new GM fish feed over the vast majority of their farmed life. Researchers embark on a new field trial this month delivering an alternative feed solution, using a genetically modified oil ingredient, to Atlantic farmed salmon which may help relieve pressure on stressed marine resources.
With a rapidly increasing global population set to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 coupled with environmental change, the challenge of feeding the world has never been greater. Making UK farming more resilient and sustainable will improve the UK’s ability to feed itself, while also benefitting the global food system more broadly.
Research into the relationship between bacterial diseases and host plants could lead to improvements in breeding for disease resistance in horticultural crops says research organisation NIAB EMR. Bacterial canker is a disease caused by Pseudomonas syringae, a bacteria that infect the stems, fruits and leaves of plums, cherries and related Prunus species.
Natural use of biology to control disease in crops is the Holy Grail of agriculture, and a team of young researchers has now pinpointed a way of easing cereals’ risks from a deadly root pathogen. In the soils of the world’s cereal fields, a family tussle between related species of fungi is underway for control of the crops’ roots, with food security threatened if the wrong side wins.
This July, the Global Food Security (GFS) programme, hosted by BBSRC, is holding an interdisciplinary sandpit - an intensive discussion forum where free thinking is encouraged. Dr Melanie Collins, International Coordinator and Strategy Manager for GFS, shares how we are working to make sandpits more accessible.
10 projects are to be funded by BBSRC and FAPESP through the Newton Fund's Joint Pump-Priming Awards for AMR and Insect Pest Resistance in Livestock and Agriculture. The pump-priming awards bring together researchers across the UK and São-Paulo to tackle core challenges for anti-microbial resistance and resistance of insect pests in the Brazilian agriculture and livestock sectors
Six projects have been awarded funding to enhance sustainable agriculture in Colombia. The projects have been awarded funding as part of the Sustainable Tropical Agricultural Systems programme, which aims to ensure reliable and sustainable food provision for Colombia.
Managing soil by well-designed grazing is key to an animal’s growth and wellbeing shows new research linking soil health, pasture value and sustainable production. Individual pastures on livestock farms yield surprisingly dissimilar benefits to a farm’s overall agricultural income, and those differences are most likely attributable to the varying levels of “soil health” provided by its grazing livestock, reveals a study published today.
A new study shows isolation of a gene controlling the shape and size of spikelets in wheat may help breeders deliver increased yields. The findings discovered by the John Innes Centre gives breeders a new tool to accelerate the global quest to improve wheat, and also highlights a range of next generation techniques available for fundamental research into wheat.
The Earlham Institute (EI, UK) and the Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU, China) are working together towards resolving the urgent issue of agri-food security in China by developing precision agriculture solutions - funded by the Newton Network+. With the largest population in the world, China feeds nearly 1.4 billion people - covering 22% of the globe's inhabitants.
11 projects are to be funded by BBSRC through the Newton Fund's UK-China-Philippines-Thailand Swine and Poultry Research Initiative to address microbiological diseases. Collaborative projects are being funded, involving leading UK bioscience researchers and teams in China, the Philippines and Thailand.
BBSRC is one of many exhibitors at the annual National Farmers Union (NFU) conference in Birmingham. The two day event, 20 and 21 February, is expected to attract thousands of visitors to the Birmingham ICC. The NFU conference is one of the agricultural sector's biggest event, setting the tone for the farming year.
Spraying weeds with chemicals has always been costly. Now it is costly and ineffective, with resistance to herbicides pervasive and demanding a new strategy to protect crops. Herbicides can no longer control the weeds that threaten crop productivity and food security in the UK because the plants have evolved resistance, and future control must depend on management strategies that reduce reliance on chemicals
NIAB EMR, in a joint UK-China research programme, has discovered several strains of the strawberry disease Verticillium wilt (Verticillium dahliae), belonging to two different groups, that act in very different ways. The results are already being used by plant breeders in the development of a new generation of wilt resistant varieties.
A promising technique that makes maize more productive even in droughts has now been unpicked and looks set to do the same for a range of other crops, including wheat and rice. Three years ago, biotechnologists demonstrated in field trials that they could increase the productivity of maize by introducing a rice gene into the plant that regulated the accumulation of sucrose in kernels and led to more kernels per maize plant.
