NIAB has appointed Dr Eric Ober as a senior research scientist and crop physiologist.
Dr Ober will provide specialist technical expertise in crop physiology on NIAB’s research in genetics and breeding and to the crops and agronomy research and advisory teams.
Eleven new first-choice varieties have been added to the BSPB 2014 Forage Maize Descriptive List.
The varieties Glory and Fieldstar from Limagrain; Ramirez and Severus from KWS; Truxx and Mixxture from RAGT; MAS 11.F from Maisadour Semences; and Aritzo from DLF have been added to the Favourable Descriptive List (DL).
Cambridge-based crop research and innovation centre NIAB has welcomed today’s publication of the UK Agricultural Technologies Strategy as a clear signal that Government is committed to unlocking the economic and productive potential of the UK agri-science base, and to supporting a resilient, hi-tech and globally competitive UK farming sector.
Monsanto's decision to withdraw applications for GM crop cultivation in the EU is a further signal that the European GM approvals process is simply not working, and not surprisingly this is driving investment and research activity by the major commercial players out of the EU, to focus their efforts on those parts of the world which do have functioning regulatory systems and receptive markets.
The Community Resource for Wheat Transformation is a resource for UK plant scientists to apply for their genes to be transformed into wheat free of charge, funded by the BBSRC’s Biological and Bioinformatic Resources (BBR) fund.
A new variety descriptive list has been created for biogas producers growing and using forage maize as a feedstock.
The British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) has launched the Biogas Maize Descriptive List for 2014 with 12 varieties listed for favourable sites and five for less favourable sites.
The Centre of Excellence for UK Farming (CEUKF), an agri-food supply-chain alliance to help UK farming address production and sustainability challenges, announced that its partnership now includes five leading UK research institutions and helps run a number of collaborative agri-food R&D projects.
Precision technology that will allow reduced herbicide use by accurately identifying and spot-spraying weeds, developed from research funded by the Horticultural Development Company (HDC), is to go into commercial production.
UK wheat yields could be boosted by up to 30% with the introduction of a new wheat bred from a wild grass species.
The National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge has recreated the original rare cross between an ancient wheat and wild grass species that happened in the Middle East 10,000 years ago. The result is a ‘synthetic’ wheat which, when crossed with modern UK varieties, could offer new sources of yield improvement, drought tolerance, disease resistance and input use efficiency.
NIAB's synthetic wheat programme will be featured on BBC Countryfile at 6pm on 12 May, and across BBC News programmes that day, as part of a feature highlighting how plants can be adapted for the future to deal with things like an increased population, reduced space and climate change.
