Businesses and entrepreneurs are being sought to take up residence in a new multi-million pound innovation centre seeking to create links between science and the farming industry.

Set to open in Inverness later this year, the Rural and Veterinary Innovation Centre (RAVIC) will bring together scientists, innovators and businesses to create new products, services and solutions to overcome sector challenges, including animal disease, climate change and food security.

There will also be an emphasis on bioscience, including animal health, as RAVIC is to form part of Scotland’s new School of Veterinary Medicine. The £12.5m project is being led by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), and funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Scottish Funding Council.

Sixteen agricultural universities across the UK have joined forces to address farming industry challenges and further the impact of their research. A new joint strategy outlines how the group of universities are working together to address the challenges that are currently faced within UK agriculture.

It was launched by the Agricultural Universities Council (AUC), which includes the likes of Scotland's Rural College, the Royal Agricultural University, and Hartpury, among 13 others. It follows a year-long investigation by the AUC into the farming industry's priorities, current research activities and its strengths and weaknesses.

The government has pledged to commit to farmers' interests in future trade deals, as well as boost UK fruit and vegetable production, as part of a new package of support.

The raft of pledges has been set out by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of the Farm to Fork Summit hosted at Downing Street today (16 May).

The government also announced up to £30 million of investment to drive forward the use of precision breeding technologies.

High-tech portable chambers for measuring methane emissions from sheep are being used in the UK for the first time. New Zealand-designed Portable Accumulation Chambers (PACs) have been unveiled as the latest tool in mitigating agricultural greenhouse gases.

The trailer-mounted chambers can predict methane emissions in individual sheep from a variety of systems, including at pasture, as well as in multiple locations. The chambers collect air samples and then analyse methane concentration, showing which genetics, feed types and systems generate the highest emission levels.

Scientists have collaborated to produce the first gene-edited calf with resistance to bovine viral diarrhea virus, a virus that costs the U.S. cattle sector billions of dollars annually. The recent study published in PNAS Nexus results from a collaboration between the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the University of Kentucky and industry partners, Acceligen and Recombinetics, Inc.

BVDV is one of the most significant viruses affecting the health and well-being of cattle worldwide, and researchers have been studying it since the 1940s when it was first recognized. This virus does not affect humans but is highly contagious among cattle and can cause severe respiratory and intestinal diseases.

Despite more than 50 years of vaccine availability, controlling BVDV disease remains a problem since vaccines are not always effective in stopping transmission.

High adoption of gene-edited crop seeds is expected in the next five to ten years, a new report by Rabobank suggests.

Although the exact timeline for the adoption of gene-editing (GE) seeds is hard to estimate, researchers expect that adoption rates will surpass 50% within five to ten years.

Rabobank's report says that GE technology has the potential to benefit the entire food supply chain, from producers to consumers.

A new technology that captures air pollution and uses sunlight to convert it into nitrate on the leaf surface of a crop has been developed by Lincoln-based Crop Intellect.

Called R-Leaf, it uses a process known as photocatalysis to break down nitrous oxide and turn it into an essential crop nutrient, offering the potential to reduce both farm emissions and the industry’s reliance on synthetic nitrogen.

Against a background of rollercoaster fertiliser markets and environmental concerns, the technology is being feted as a ground-breaking development that will allow farmers to make better use of nitrogen fertiliser and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its use.

The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau today announced how Canada will handle crop cultivars that contain gene-editing as part of the breeding process. Bibeau says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is officially moving ahead with Part V(5) of the Seed Regulations changes that have been under consultation since 2021. Last May, Health Canada released guidelines regarding the approval of plants with non-novel traits, prompting the organic sector to ask for more clarification on how gene-edited varieties would be kept separate from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

The announcement means that varieties or cultivars developed with gene-editing will not be considered a GMO under Canadian rules. Bibeau says that gene-editing ushers in a new era for plant breeding techniques, replicating conventional methods more quickly, adding that the scientific consensus is that gene-edited crops are as safe for humans, animals, and the environment as those created through conventional breeding.

Industry bodies have reacted with anger after the government ditched plans for an English horticulture strategy.

The promise to put together a plan for the sector, which is battling sky-high input costs and labour shortages, was made in the government’s wider food strategy published in June last year.

But this week, Defra farming minister Mark Spencer said the pledge was being scrapped because the sector operates in a “complex, ever-evolving commercial and political landscape”.

Health Canada has added Pairwise’s gene edited mustard greens to its list of “non-novel” foods. Through a voluntary process, Pairwise notified Health Canada about the mustard greens (Brassica juncea) that the company has bred using the tools of gene editing, or CRISPR, to reduce the natural pungency of the greens, thereby improving their flavor.

Pairwise provided the voluntary notification on March 7, 2023, and received a response from Health Canada the same day confirming the Agency would add our mustard greens to its list of non-novel foods developed through plant breeding and intended as food in Canada. According to Health Canada, these plants aren’t subject to pre-market assessment before their use in the Canadian food supply, as they are considered “non-novel.”