NIAB has announced that Professor Xiangming Xu has become Director of Research.
Formerly Head of Science at NIAB’s horticultural centre at East Malling in Kent, Professor Xu is now responsible for developing and delivering the strategy for research activities across the whole of NIAB. This is in addition to his role in co-ordinating research activities at East Malling.
This year’s programme aims to address many of the challenges facing UK agriculture on the theme ‘Providing policy and regulatory support for multi-functional UK agriculture’.
As ever there will be an array of technical and informative sessions targeted at regulators, industry and academia who work in the crop protection and crop production industry. High class and informed speakers will take an in-depth look at the current challenges facing UK agriculture and provide some solutions and insight into the way forward.
Since its foundation by a Deed of Trust in 1919, NIAB has been honoured to have Royal support and is immensely proud that The Queen was our Patron for the past 70 years.
The initiative is part of the new £32 million Defra-funded Future Farming Resilience Fund programme, helping farmers prepare for the Agricultural Transition, which will see direct support payments reduce to zero by 2027. From October 2022 until March 2025, farmers will be able to access free advice and support to help their business adapt to the challenges caused by food supply chain pressures, rising input costs, extreme weather events and the changes to agricultural support.
The Israeli Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Oded Forer, visited the research station at NIAB’s East Malling site and a leading strawberry grower in Kent to explore the UK’s agri-food sector, on Thursday 30 June.
Coordinated by Growing Kent & Medway, the visit enabled the Minister to discover the modern science and technology being developed at NIAB, and explore how cooperation in agriculture technology could be enhanced between Israel and the UK.
To get a better picture of what European seed companies are doing to mitigate climate change, European Seed Magazine asked all national seed associations in Europe, and many other peers in the European seed sector, to nominate companies that are making an effort to mitigate climate change.
The article in the magazine, written by Marcel Bruins, says: 'The reactions were overwhelming. It showed me that many companies are, in fact, already doing a lot. Not just through their new varieties but also in the fields of renewable energy, recycling, and much more.'
The message coming from this review, is that there is already a large uptake of IPM in the UK, with improvements each year. A report presented in the review by Dr Henry Creissen, Research Fellow in Crop Protection Scotland’s Rural College, showed that there were nearly 5,000 IPM assessments completed in the UK to date. This shows a good uptake in the industry, with growers using IPM strategies on an increasing basis.
As part of this project, UKCEH and NIAB are holding a workshop to discuss regenerative farming practices/procedures that aim to improve on-farm sustainability, with a particular focus on soil carbon (eg reducing soil carbon losses as greenhouse gases).
This will include discussions about reduced tillage practices all the way through to high water table and vertical farming. The purpose of the workshop is to facilitate discussions to help identify the barriers to and opportunities for regenerative farming on agricultural peat.
Despite reports of interesting observations in the field, the UKCPVS team have received a lower number of rust samples compared to this time last year. It is important to send in infected leaf samples from a range of varieties from across the UK to help provide a robust assessment of pathogen populations within the UK, which is needed to direct plant breeding efforts and crop management.
We welcome wheat yellow and brown rust samples (as well as wheat and barley mildew samples) from all Recommended List (RL) and RL candidate varieties from across the country.
