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Horticulture and potato initiative

Invited full application deadline: 11 September 2012 TBC

As part of our portfolio of activities related to food security, we are launching a new collaborative funding activity to support excellent quality, industrially relevant research projects on potato and edible horticulture crops.

We will invest up to £7M through two calls. The Scottish Government and Natural Environment Research Council are also contributing to this initiative. The first call is open and information can be found on the apply for funding page.

Through discussions with companies from the sector we have identified 6 key areas where research is necessary to help improve food security:

• Changing seasons
• Crop maturity and spoilage
• Soil
• Pests and pathogens
• Seed quality and vigour
• Resource use efficiency

All of these areas are within scope for the first call. Further details can be found in the full call text (see downloads section).

Aims

• To support high quality, innovative, strategic research within UK universities and institutes to underpin the development of improved potato and edible horticulture crop production systems that sustainably deliver increased productivity and consistent, high quality food products
• To strengthen the academic research community and encourage collaborations which will move research closer to application in the areas of crop breeding, production and processing for food crops through interdisciplinary research and the provision of training
• To ensure the exchange of knowledge between the science base and industry through effective networking between academic groups and companies

Workshops

Consortia-building workshop - 28 February 2012

To help develop successful project ideas we held a workshop in February to bring together interested companies and researchers.

Presentations and other documents from the workshop are available below:

• Introduction – Andy Cureton (PDF 530KB)
• The Big Picture – Bill Davies (PDF 3.59MB)
• Workshop booklet, including attendee information (PDF 377KB)
• Single slide profiles of workshop attendees (PDF 2.89MB)
• Outputs from the workshop breakout sessions (PDF 122KB)

Discussion workshop - 20 October 2011

As part of our discussions with industry, we recently hosted a workshop to discuss:

• the research needs of the horticulture and potato sector
• potential funding models for supporting collaborative research between industry and academia

Presentations from the workshop and a report of the discussion are available below:

• Food security in horticulture and potato production (PDF 1.00MB)
• Improving the performance of horticultural crops and potatoes - Andy Cureton (PDF 479KB)
• BBSRC and food security - Andy Curetron (PDF 714KB)
• Research challenges - crop protection - Emma Garrod (PDF 1.34MB)
• Research needs of the horticulture and potato sectors - resource use efficiency - Mike Storey (PDF 493KB)
• Adapting to climate change - Sue Kennedy (PDF 575KB)
• Post-harvest quality of fresh produce - R&D needs and opportunities - Theresa Huxley (PDF 459KB)
• Workshop report (PDF 63KB)

For information on calls for proposals see apply for funding.

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