Five Projects Receive £1.4 Million for Sustainable Crop Production
- Growing Kent & Medway
- Oct 24, 2023
- 5 min read
Funding of up to £350,000 was awarded through our Collaborative Research and Development Grants to connect businesses with Kent-based research organisations.
Awarded through a competitive process, proposed projects had to support the transition to net-zero carbon emissions and improve productivity and sustainability in horticultural and plant-based food and drink production.
The first round of winners was announced in April 2022, with over £1m awarded to six innovative projects.
Lead Organisation | Projects | Grant Award |
Next-generation apple breeding for resilient UK production | £222,000 | |
Second Life: Development of sustainable recycled growing media | £273,000 | |
Turning over a new leaf: Use of state-of-the-art phenotyping and genomics to breed for plant architecture in strawberry | £257,000 | |
To improve the propagation of raspberry plants in the UK, using sustainable, novel methods. | £333,000 | |
To develop and test an integrated biocontrol program for aphid control in raspberry. | £265,000 |
Shortening the Breeding Cycle of Apples
Project aim: To test methods of shortening the breeding cycle of apples to speed up bringing new varieties to market
Access to new apple varieties is crucial for the future sustainability of the UK apple industry. New varieties tend to have a significantly higher retail value and therefore offer larger margins for apple growers. However, many of the new cultivars introduced to the UK market are susceptible to apple scab, powdery mildew, or European canker. These are three apple diseases that are highly prevalent in the UK. This has led to a heavy reliance on chemical disease control.
Breeding apples with improved disease resistance is a long process, traditionally taking 20-25 years. Such timescales leave the apple industry vulnerable to the emergence of new threats.
This project aims to develop modern breeding methods to enable a shorter breeding cycle for apples. This should lead to a faster route to market for new, more disease-resistant cultivars. The project will research three breeding methods and their potential to shorten the breeding cycle:
Genomic selection
Molecular marker-trait associations
Speed breeding.
Lead organisation: Worldwide Fruit Ltd is the UK’s largest, grader, packer, storer, marketer, and distributor of UK pome fruits. With offices in Canterbury and Spalding, Worldwide Fruit Ltd is a major supplier of pip fruit to all the major UK retailer supermarkets.
Research partner: Niab
Grant awarded: £222,000
Related news: Next generation apple breeding
Development of Sustainable Recycled Growing Media
Project aim: To look at methods of recycling used coir in soft fruit production
The market demand for affordable, sustainable, and safely recycled coir media for the soft fruit market is considerable and growing, due to the increased costs of virgin coir.
The project will look at the challenges in producing high-quality, low-disease risk, sustainable growing media from used coir. They will consider how to overcome these challenges to reliably standardise the biological, chemical, and physical properties of the recycled material.
The aim is to provide soft fruit growers with a reliable coir recycling service. Using recycled coir will help to significantly reduce the carbon emissions of shipping virgin coir. It will also greatly reduce the waste generated by coir bags and spent coir material.
Lead organisation: The project will be led by Overland Farm. Based at Ash, near Canterbury, Overland Farm specialises in horticultural waste removal and retrieval services for glasshouses and polytunnels.
Research partner: Niab
Grant awarded: £273,000
Recycling Coir to Cut Carbon Emissions
British soft fruit growers could cut their carbon footprint by up to 40% by switching to recycled coir.
Use of State-of-the-art Phenotyping and Genomics to Breed for Plant Architecture in Strawberry
Project Aim: To use cutting-edge techniques to breed strawberry plants with a better shape and structure for more profitable production.
Plant architecture, or the way the strawberry plant grows, is critical for profitable production. Influencing factors include how many leaves the plant produces, how the leaves are positioned, and how the fruit and flowers are displayed. The plant architecture has an important effect on how many berries are produced and how sweet those berries are. Dense canopies may lead to a greater risk of disease or pest infestations. And very bushy plants make picking the berries much slower.
It has been estimated that plants with well-balanced architecture could reduce production costs by more than 10%. Plant breeders have therefore tried to breed new varieties with good plant architecture, but the process is difficult because the traits are complex.
This project will aim to develop molecular markers to help breed new strawberry varieties. It will use cutting-edge machine-learning technologies to capture data on plant architecture. This data, along with information about the DNA of the strawberry plants, will be used to develop tools to breed strawberries with better plant architecture.
The project outcomes will lead to the development of superior, more sustainable strawberry varieties for the UK that will keep the growers profitable.
Lead organisation: Based in the South East, Edward Vinson Ltd has been growing fruit for over 150 years. They are the leading supplier of soft fruit to UK supermarkets and run a successful breeding programme.
Research partner: Niab
Grant awarded: £256,000
Improving Propagation Efficiency and Resilience in the Raspberry Industry
Project aim: To improve the propagation of raspberry plants in the UK, using sustainable, novel methods.
Much of the propagation material used by the raspberry industry to grow healthy crops is imported from the EU. With rising energy and fuel costs and complications associated with importing following the UK’s exit from Europe, there are growing strains on the raspberry industry in the UK to find more reliable sources of propagation material.
To improve the quality of raspberry canes and to increase the survival rates of the plants grown in the UK, the project will develop a sustainable and integrated management strategy. It will incorporate the use of commercially available beneficial microorganisms into the current propagation practice.
Beneficial microbes will be incorporated into the key stages of raspberry propagation to improve the survivability, growth, and yield of plants. It will address the challenge to produce consistent healthy disease-free 'Malling Bella' raspberry plants whilst re-using coir substrates with enhanced microbial diversity.
Lead organisation: Recoir, based in Maidstone, produce sustainable growing mediums, by repurposing and reusing resources to extend their lifecycle, including coir.
Research partner: Niab
Grant awarded: £333,000
A Biocontrol Programme for Large Raspberry Aphid Control
Project aim: To develop and test an integrated biocontrol programme for aphid control in raspberry.
The production of raspberry crops can be hampered by aphid infestation, mainly from the large raspberry aphid (Amphorophora idaei). Controlling this aphid was historically done by breeding aphid-resistant cultivars and spraying pesticides. However, these methods are no longer adequate.
Controlling aphids is now anchored on integrated pest management strategies that depend on the use of effective biocontrol products, such as parasitoids and predators. However, research has not been done to align the effectiveness of different biocontrol components into a cohesive, integrated biocontrol program to protect raspberry crops from aphids. This leads to losses in production, wastage of unmarketable fruit, and inefficient resource use in raspberry crops.
The overall project aim is to incorporate different biocontrol components into a season-long programme that is responsive to the seasonal changes in the plants and aphids. Additionally, the research consortium will conduct a cost-benefit analysis to ensure that adequate control maintains the market competitiveness of locally produced raspberries. This research will also provide valuable information and data for future research to create biocontrol programs for other soft fruit crops in the UK.
Lead organisation: Rumwood Green Farm is a leading English grower of soft and top fruits. It is a fourth-generation business, based outside Maidstone.
Research partner: Niab
Grant awarded: £265,000
Related news: Developing new biocontrol for large raspberry aphid
