A new project aims to tackle the lack of seasonal labour in the UK horticulture industry as researchers look to accelerate the delivery of robotic crop systems.

Agri-OpenCore aims to slash the time and cost of developing a robotic harvesting system that achieves parity with human picking. As part of it, researchers want to develop commercial systems for tomato and strawberry harvesting that achieve human-picking-cost-parity in two years.

There is currently no robotic harvesting system that can match the speed of human picking. It comes as many crops have gone unpicked this year, leading to large amounts of unnecessary waste.

England is not ready for the unavoidable impacts of global warming, the government's advisers on climate change say in a new report.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said the government hasn't achieved any of its targets and needed a policy "step change" to avoid loss of life.

The CCC reviews the government's adaptation plans - preparations to cope with the effects of global warming. The government said it would take the recommendations into account.

Three cutting-edge projects will receive a share of over £9 million in funding to carry out research and development on proposals to boost farming productivity.

The funding will support projects developing robotic crop harvesting for horticulture and an autonomous system to change cows’ bedding to improve productivity. The funding, announced by Defra, will also go toward a more environmentally-friendly approach to potato cultivation.

The three projects are being supported through the Large R&D Partnership competition, which is part of the government’s £270m Farming Innovation Programme.

Farmers are one step closer to tapping into gene editing technology, after the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act has made its way through Parliament.

The Act will remove precision bred, or ‘gene edited’, products from the scope of GMO legislation, bringing rules in line with other countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Argentina.

The British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) has hailed the announcement as hugely significant for Britain’s plant breeders, because it is the first time in more than two decades that regulations have been brought forward which seek to enable and support the use of genetic innovation in agriculture.

The UK government’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill is set to receive royal assent, the final step towards the new legislation on gene editing.

The bill has passed through both houses of parliament and it will soon be signed into law. A date for royal assent is yet to be scheduled, but Farmers Weekly understands this is only weeks away.

Outside of the EU’s rules on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), it aims to develop a new legislative framework in England for products developed through new plant breeding techniques, such as gene editing.

A new whitepaper has outlined the 'urgent need' for standardised tools and metrics to support the ruminant livestock sector in the UK to reach net zero.

Six priority recommendations in EIT Food's report include promoting regenerative agriculture strategies and rewarding farmers who support the transition to net zero.

Priority recommendations [also] include the urgent need for an internationally agreed and standardised measurement system to monitor the sector's GHGs, so that the effects of any changes or interventions can be monitored and verified over time.

Farm leader Minette Batters has criticised Defra’s Environmental Land Management scheme for farmers in England, arguing that it is not supported by science.

The NFU president delivered her damning verdict on Environmental Land Management (ELM) at Reading University during a speech on balancing net zero with food security. She questioned how the UK government could drive a new policy without scientific rigour.

Mrs Batters suggested the UK government should have involved the country’s best scientists in the design of ELM, including our world-leading, science-based agricultural research institutes, such as Rothamsted Research and Niab.

Parts of Britain's landscape today would be unrecognisable to someone who grew up just 70 years ago, a major survey of plant life suggests.

Non-native species have thrived while some native plants have been hit by modern agriculture and climate change.

In a 20-year study, botanists counted more non-native than native species in the wild. Thousands of volunteers counted millions of flora to produce a Plant Atlas covering the UK and Ireland.

The UK and Europe are leading the way for global agri-tech investments, having received nearly £81 billion from over 1,700 investors, according to a new report.

The report has highlighted that global investment in agri-tech is growing, almost doubling to £100 billion between January 2020 and January 2021.

Since 2000 – when worldwide investment stood at less than £1 billion – companies headquartered in the UK and mainland Europe have attracted over 43% of global investment in agri-tech.

Brazil has approved the cultivation and sale of drought-tolerant genetically modified wheat, a major boost for the once taboo crop as global food supply fears and regional dry weather burnishes the lure of GMO.

The approval, which biosecurity agency CTNbio posted, makes Brazil the second nation after Argentina to approve Bioceres' HB4 wheat strain for cultivation. Other markets have approved it for consumption.

Brazil is one of the world's largest consumer markets and food exporters. While the green-light does not mean Brazil will necessarily grow GMO wheat for production soon, it reflects a major shift in attitudes as climate change and the war in Ukraine sharpen worries over a global food crisis.