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Collaborative research:

About LINK

Involves collaborative research with at least one company and one science-base partner (projects with SMEs are particularly favoured). Overall Government support can be up to 50% of total eligible costs.

Applications should be for pre-competitive research that would not be undertaken in this form without LINK support.

Partners must agree ownership and exploitation of intellectual property arising from the project, at the outset. An appropriate management framework must be in place, with defined scientific and commercial deliverables.

Benefits for company partners include:

• financial support for the project
• closer relationships with the science base
• possibility of recruiting appropriately trained staff at the end of the project

Case studies

QUOATS - Harnessing new technologies for sustainable oat production and utilisation

A five-year Sustainable Arable LINK project launched in September 2009, QUOATS is led by Aberystwyth University (IBERS) and is jointly sponsored by:

• BBSRC
• Defra 
• Welsh Assembly Government's Academic Expertise for Business (A4B) programme with European Regional Development funding  
• Scottish Government Contract Research Fund
• AHDB and industry partners

Dr Athole Marshall of IBERS, Aberystwyth University leads the QUOATS project © IBERS

Harnessing the unique properties of oats both as a plant and a grain we can address some of the emerging problems with cereal cultivation and at the same time deliver an environmentally benign crop which offers considerable health benefits for human and livestock consumption.

The QUOATS project seeks to develop oats with the agronomic qualities, yield, economic competitiveness and quality traits that meet the need of growers and industrial end-users. It is developing powerful enabling technologies for the identification of specific genes and molecular markers associated with key traits. In collaboration with academic partners and industrial end-users across the whole production chain.

The project capitalises on the value of oats as a profitable component of sustainable arable production for human and livestock consumption and for industrial end uses as proven by the earlier, and very successful, OatLINK project.

For more information visit the project website at www.quoats.org.

Conversion of high sugar grasses to alcohol based transport fuel (Grassohol)

© IBERS

A 3-year Renewable Materials LINK project launched in April, 2009 focusing on sugar-rich varieties of perennial ryegrass, developed at Aberystwyth University's Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), as a raw material for producing bio-ethanol. With funding from Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the BBSRC, the project brings together the expertise of 8 partners from industry. Project Director Dr Joe Gallagher. "It offers significant potential for biofuel production and the involvement of each partner demonstrates the commercial importance of the research as we move inexorably towards a bio-based economy".

The team are experimenting with different soils, fertilizers and companion crops such as white clover, with the aim of reducing dependency on artificial oil-based fertilizers. Early results are promising and indicate that up to 4,500 litres of ethanol per hectare of ryegrass could be produced every year, comparable with other energy crops but with the advantage of being environmentally friendly, capable of growing on poorer land and with cheaper management costs.

Controlling supply, quality and waste in brassica vegetables: Understanding the genetics of maturity to breed varieties in response to climate change

© Sue Kennedy, Elsoms

© Sue Kennedy, Elsoms

A Horticultural LINK project launched in July 2009 and funded solely by us in collaboration with industry partners from Bejo Zaden B.V., Weatherquest and Elsoms Seeds.

Project leader Dr Judith Irwin from the John Innes Institute is coordinating a consortium that is working on controlling supply, quality and waste in brassica vegetables, and understanding the genetics of maturity to breed varieties in response to climate change.

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