Genetically-modified (GM) purple tomatoes with high levels of health-giving antioxidants - developed by Norwich scientists - could be available in the USA from next spring. Prof Cathie Martin and her team at the John Innes Centre has been researching tomatoes since 2008 as part of a long-term project to improve human health and diets.

She told members of Stalham Farmers’ Club that several GM purple tomato varieties were in the final stages of lengthy and exhaustive regulatory reviews in the United States. If approved, it was possible that seeds of the purple tomato varieties might be available to gardeners and growers in the American market from the early spring, she said.

The UK's chief veterinary officer has told the BBC there is a "phenomenal level" of avian flu in the UK. Tens of thousands of farmed birds have already been culled, as the" largest number of premises ever" in an avian influenza outbreak are infected. Officials say the risk to human health is low - there is no link to the Covid-19 pandemic - but infected birds should not be touched.

"It has huge human, animal, and trade implications," the chief vet said. Lessons learned from the foot-and-mouth outbreak are being used to try to control the outbreak, Dr Christine Middlemiss added.

Scientists have for the first time obtained stem cells from livestock that grow under chemically defined conditions, paving the way for manufacturing cultured meat and breeding enhanced livestock.

Researchers from UK and Japanese institutions have developed stem cell lines from pigs, sheep and cattle embryos grown without the need for serum, feeder cells or antibiotics.

The research, by the Universities of Nottingham, Cambridge, Exeter, Tokyo and Meiji, has been published in the journal Development and was funded by BBSRC, EU (ERC), MRC and Wellcome Trust.

Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture released today the fourth edition of its landmark National Indicators Report, Environmental Indicators for Measuring Outcomes of On-Farm Agricultural Production in the United States, which provides critical national-level analysis on progress in environmental indicators across eleven U.S. commodity crops.

The report, last issued in 2016, demonstrates that progress across five key environmental indicators has largely plateaued over the last decade, demonstrating an urgent need for greater collective action from the value chain in order to achieve sustained transformation of the agricultural system.

A variety of the fungus that causes the disease Phoma on oilseed rape and other brassicas has been discovered in Europe for the first time, at sites in Southern England and Northern Ireland.

The Plenodomus biglobosus ‘canadensis’ variant was discovered last spring on wasabi plants, marking the first time the disease has been found on the vegetable.

Another variant of the fungus, P. biglobosus ‘brassicae’ was also discovered infecting wasabi at a third site in the West Midlands. DNA analysis of cultures taken from the infected plants confirmed the identification, said Rothamsted plant pathologist, Dr Kevin King.

Scientists have used gene editing technology to create female-only and male-only litters of mice.

Their technique could prevent the destruction of hundreds of thousands of unwanted mice used in research.

The team says it could also prevent the slaughter of millions of male chickens in the UK, which are culled because they don't lay eggs.

Defra Secretary George Eustice has said Government subsidies and interventions do nothing to support food security.

Speaking at the CLA Rural Business Conference, Mr Eustice pointed to growing self-sufficiency in the largely unsubsidised poultry, egg and soft fruit sectors as evidence that state support does not lead to better food security outcomes.

He also told Farmers Guardian the Government did not intend to back a legal food self-sufficiency target, as called for by the NFU, claiming the right approach is to ‘target improved farm profitability, then successful domestic production will follow’.

Morrisons has announced it will reduce the amount of soya it uses in its supply chain by installing insect ‘mini farms’ at 10 of its free range egg farms.

It estimated reducing soya from 10 farms’ feed would remove 5,737 tonnes of CO2 and save 56 hectares of South American land from deforestation every year.

It comes as part of a move to become the first supermarket to launch own brand carbon neutral eggs in 2022.

Robust regulations must be put in place to protect the welfare of farmed animals before genome-editing procedures are approved for commercial livestock, ethicists have warned.

Powerful gene-editing techniques have the potential to improve modern farming by making animals resistant to heat and disease, reducing methane emissions and increasing productivity, but the same approaches could also exacerbate animal welfare problems, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics says.

Though farms have yet to embrace genome editing for animals, its potential in agriculture has driven intense research efforts around the world, leading to experimental animals that demonstrate the viability of the approach. In September, the UK government announced it would bring forward legislation that would pave the way for some genome editing to be allowed in animal breeding.

The UK’s chief scientist has suggested solutions to help UK agriculture reduce its environmental impact and meet its net-zero carbon targets. Professor Gideon Henderson, chief scientific adviser at Defra, laid out the climate challenge for agriculture while addressing a Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum policy conference online this week.

“We need to free up land for trees and biomass. We need to get off some of our peat and re-wet it, and we need to decrease the emissions that we have from our meat production sector,” he stressed.

First, Prof Henderson identified protein consumption as an area to tackle. “We eat too much protein at the moment and we should change our diet,” he said. “We should think about alternatives – more peas, more beans.”