ATW 2025: When Biology Meets Technology – University of Essex

Agri-TechE Week 2025 celebrates its 12th year! Our largest yet, featuring 11 events curated by Agri-TechE and hosted by our incredible member community, followed by the REAP Conference on 4th November. This week exemplifies innovation, collaboration, and forward-thinking in agri-tech.

Each event reflects the strength of our ecosystem, showcasing what our community can achieve and bringing together our growers, researchers, and technology developers. A big thank you to our members for hosting – we wouldn’t have an agri-tech week without you and we are very proud to have your membership.

Industry representatives and researchers from the Essex Plant Innovation Centre (EPIC) at the University of Essex got together to explore the latest research & innovations that are addressing challenges faced by the agricultural industry.

Talk Summaries

The first talks addressed genome editing in agriculture. A keynote talk from Professor Jim Dunwell (ACRE) provided a thorough overview of the legal background and recent changes affecting the use of genome editing tools and organisms. Jim also discussed some recent project that have utilised genome editing. Dr Andrew Simkin (University of Essex), who also hosted the event, gave a talk about the use of genetic technologies in optimising plants for vertical farms. Andrew and his colleagues are exploring how genetic traits that cause semi‑dwarfing in cereal crops could be adapted for use in cucumber and pepper plants, potentially improving production efficiencies for indoor‑grown plants.

Dr Jacob Pullin, CEO of HiFe Plants, presented his team’s work on developing high‑iron plant varieties. Iron deficiency is one of the most prevalent examples of micronutrient deficiencies globally, particularly in women of a reproductive age, and current supplementation techniques lack bioavailability and cause unpleasant side effects. HiFe are working to develop plants that are able to incorporate large quantities of bioavailable iron that will address this dietary deficiency.

The audience then heard from Dr Pallavi Singh (University of Essex) about her work on engineering rice crops with increased water use efficiency. Rice is one of the most important staple crops on the planet, but requires large amounts of water to grow, particularly problematic considering the climate crisis. Pallavi and her team are working on novel techniques that can reduce water use.

Arjomand Ghareghani, Chief Scientific Officer at Aquagrain then talked on his companies work developing a product that addresses water use efficiency, soil erosion and soil quality. Produced from waste food products, Aquagrain is a nutrient, micro‑nutrient and trace element‑rich biodegradable soil additive that absorbs large amounts of water, enabling growers to produce crops in poor‑quality and arid soils. The company has won multiple international prizes in recent years.

Two University of Essex early career researchers then gave lighting talks on their work. Myo Wai is working with the British Beet Research Organisation to improve the sugar beet industry’s ability to withstand drought conditions. Yathreb Mahjoubi, in conjunction with Stourgarden, is leading an investigation into the commercial viability of growing Allium in a controlled environment.

Conclusions

Technological advance has a key role to play in enabling the agricultural industry to develop to flourish, from the micro‑scale of genome editing to optimisation of indoor onion growing the collaboration of research and industry will continue to be key in global crop production.