A new virtual centre will see five agricultural universities work together to address the gap between scientific research on innovation and real-life farming experience.

The Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture (CEIA) will look at how research and development investment can best support innovation to be adopted by farmers.

The centre will create practical guides for government and policy makers about effective agricultural research and how to target research funds effectively.

Meeting the UK's world-leading climate change target will be a "colossal challenge", a government spending watchdog has warned. The National Audit Office says it will affect the way we work, travel, heat our homes - even how much meat we eat.

In a report it says the cost of cutting CO2 is highly uncertain, but the cost of allowing temperatures to rise would probably be greater. The PM has vowed to cut emissions by 68% by 2030 based on 1990 levels.

A map depicting soil fertility every 30 metres across Africa could boost the livelihoods and human health across 54 nations, international scientists have said.

Produced by iSDA, a social enterprise founded by Rothamsted Research, World Agroforestry and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the map charts 3.4 million square miles of potential agricultural land and has gathered data on acidity, organic content and nutrient levels from every field.

A world first, it is hoped the map will help improve harvests and target nutrients as well as advise farmers about yield forecasting, crop suitability and fertiliser application.

Genome editing techniques that modify the DNA of plants do not pose more hazards than conventional breeding or techniques that introduce new DNA into a plant, an EFSA assessment concludes.

The scientific opinion focuses on plants produced using different genome editing techniques: site-directed nuclease-1 (SDN-1), site-directed nuclease-2 techniques (SDN-2) and oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM). These differ from site-directed nucleases-3 (SDN-3), which was assessed by EFSA in 2012, because they modify a specific region of the genome without introducing new DNA.

European and UK legislation on deforestation is a ‘huge opportunity’ for Brazilian agriculture with the industry confident it can increase production and efficiency without damage to the Amazon.

But industry leaders, speaking at a round-table by Apex-Brasil, the Brazilian trade and investment promotion agency, said communicating its sustainability credentials would be key.

Celso Moretti, president of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), said Brazil had made a ‘fantastic transformation’ over the past 50 years driven by science and technology.

The sugar industry has submitted an application for emergency authorisation of Cruiser SB (thiamethoxam) as a neonicotinoid seed treatment, to be used to protect the English sugar beet crop in 2021.

This comes as sugar beet growers faced ‘unprecedented’ challenges in 2020 as the impact of virus yellows saw some yields fall by 70 per cent.

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)’s Farm Excellence network will launch its first wave of on-farm carbon footprinting this month.

Chosen to represent a range of regions, systems and sectors, a total of 40 strategic and monitor farms will be the first to be assessed to determine their carbon footprint.

The assessments will be carried out by SAC Consulting and ADAS between November 2020 and March 2021, with results leading to bespoke mitigation measures in detailed carbon action plans.

Defra’s former chief scientist Professor Ian Boyd has called on Government to spend as much on food research as it does on health research.

Prof Boyd said food was so important to humanity, and so interlinked with public health, that the budgets should be the same. At the moment, the UK’s food research spend stands at less than 10 per cent of the heath research budget.

According to Prof Boyd, the money should be spent on research on three transformative technologies – genetics, robotics and process engineering – in order to boost UK agriculture’s productivity.

A Dutch scientist turned film maker has teamed up with a group of European farmers to produce a crowd-funded documentary film which will dispel the mistruths surrounding glyphosate.

The Glyphosate Chronicles aims to address myths spread by the anti-glyphosate lobby around the safety of the herbicide, its role in sustainable farming and what the consequences of a ban would mean for European agriculture.

Molecular biologist, Hidde Boersma of Sugar Rush Films who is making the documentary said the film will ‘unearth the fraudulent activity, shoddy science, unscrupulous lawyers and hardcore ideological activists which make up the powerful anti-glyphosate lobby.’

Scottish farmers have been told they could become the champions rather than villains of climate change if prepared to follow a new path of “transformative” measures advocated by an independent group.

The Farming for 1.5°C Inquiry – made up of farmers, scientists and researchers, environmentalists, policy experts and campaigners –has published an interim report it believes will meet the challenge of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, will lead to net-zero for Scottish farming and ensure the future of a robust industry,

The interim report makes it clear success will require more than tinkering at the edges of current support schemes, but rather an ambitious “emissions reduction plus sequestration pathway” which would have targets and whole-farm plans of action for each of the three key greenhouse gases.