News article

The Future of Vegetable Production on Lowland Peat exposes the risks of continuing to drain the UK’s limited areas of lowland peat for intensive cultivation, which releases huge quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere while depleting soils and landscapes that are essential to UK food security.

The report is an independent study by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and NIAB, commissioned through the WWF and Tesco partnership.

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The Oxford Farming Conference (OFC), the UK’s leading agricultural, business and food event, has announced three new Directors will join their board.

NIAB CEO Professor Mario Caccamo, farm estate manager David Hill, and food and drink consultant and coordinator Sheena Horner, will commence their three-year term from January 2024.

Available to all - access the online PDF version of Issue 53 - Autumn 2023, featuring a special on lowland peat farming

She was welcomed to NIAB by Cambridgeshire Deputy Lord Lieutenant Caroline Bewes DL, and introduced to Lucy Miles, the Lord-Lieutenant’s Cadet, Dr Bharatkumar N Khetani, High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Councillor Peter Fane, Chair of South Cambridgeshire District Council.

The move will allow NIAB to concentrate on its soft fruit research, similar to its already established programmes in arable crops, as the organisation moves to prioritising the provision of translational research to benefit growers, consumers and the environment. It will also open up new opportunities to work with leading soft fruit breeders and propagators across the industry, including Bayer. 

Ideally you will bring experience and specialist knowledge to build on our vision for NIAB, providing an impartial and confidential sounding board to the NIAB CEO and Executive.

Whether it be your network of contacts and trusted partners, your ability to ask challenging questions and suggest innovative solutions or your diverse blend of skills that matches our strategic direction – you can help shape NIAB’s future.

The programme provides a unique opportunity for transformative and interdisciplinary food systems research, and there are two studentships now available with NIAB at East Malling.

These are species that have declined by 50% in the last 25 years and show no immediate signs of recovery (BTO, RSPB, JNCC 2015), making them birds of the highest conservation concern.

The headline this year was a pair of Corn Buntings. Known as ‘the fat bird of the barley’ in some circles, a male signing its distinctive jingle-jangle song was first observed at the end of May, and was later seen carrying food: a likely sign it was providing for chicks in a nest. Although seen in recent years, this is the first year of probable breeding.

Throughout the day, we shared images of staff at work from our HQ in Cambridge, East Malling in Kent and beyond to show you 24 hours of plant science into practice. Here are our best posts:

NIAB staff supporting #FARM24

NIAB has recently obtained a research grant to explore which soil properties affect apple canker severity in commercial apple orchards. The results could identify the optimum soil types which are less conducive to canker development and accelerate research on soil treatments to slow disease spread.