Productivity, Growth, Nature – farmers are talking about how to maximise the first without compromising the latter.
The new Crop Science Centre brings together excellence in discovery science from the Dept of Plant Sciences with NIAB’s unparalleled expertise in applied crop research. At the launch, director Professor Giles Oldroyd said: “We are excited to be opening this new Centre, which can drive the transformative change we so desperately need.”
To avoid infection with the wrong type of microbes, legume plants need to accurately identify the beneficial symbiotic bacteria that help them to fix nitrogen. A group of scientists have discovered the mechanism that enables legumes to do this, offering a major step towards their goal to engineer nitrogen fixation in cereal crops. Improved nitrogen uptake would reduce the need for artificial fertilisers.
Stephen Briggs gives the lowdown on the UK’s largest agroforestry operation in Cambridgeshire, where he grows cereals and fruits, side by side in strips, across 52 hectares of rich fenland soil. He will be talking about his experiences at an Agri-TechE event.
“Carbon credits could provide an income stream for farmers based on societal value of carbon’, says David R Montgomery, keynote speaker at REAP 2020.
Fafaza, is a precision crop spraying technology that performs plant recognition and individual treatment in real time. It has been developed by innovation specialist Cambridge Consultants.
To understand which flowers are important for bees, scientists from the Earlham Institute (EI), with the University of East Anglia (UEA), have developed a new method to rapidly identify the sources of bee pollen.
As the cost of technology for sensing and monitoring falls and powerful computing power becoming more available Smart Farming becomes closer to the field. New and emerging technologies on show in the Innovation Hub
The mood at the 2019 Oxford Farming Conference clearly reflected the need to face and embrace change but at what scale and what cost?
There is greater consensus over Sustainable Intensification practices by farmers than originally thought, offering indicators to policymakers
It might be considered a nuisance by pond owners, but ‘duckweed’ offers a high protein alternative to soy that can be grown in arid countries with very little water. Start-up company DryGro is set to disrupt a huge global market, with a growing system for Lemnoideae that promises to revolutionise animal production in sub-Saharan countries.
“We know as arable farmers that we need to do something to improve soil health and structure and the inclusion of livestock in the rotation