A plan to protect and improve the health of honey bees in England and Wales has been published by Defra and the Welsh Government.

Four key outcomes include effective biosecurity and a good standard of husbandry to minimise pest and disease risk, enhanced skills and production capability, the use of science and evidence to support bee health and increased opportunities for knowledge exchange and partnerships with wider pollinator needs.

British scientists are using cryotechnology that will keep key UK crops secure at very cold temperatures in a bid to improve sustainability and yield.

The UK Crop Microbiome Cryobank will facilitate the sustainable yield improvement of six major crops including barley, oats, oilseed rape, potato, sugar beet and wheat.

The five-year project is being spearheaded by CABI, along with researchers from Rothamsted Research, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the John Innes Centre.

UK farmers should be able to access new crop protection products quicker than their EU counterparts post-Brexit, the chief executive of the Crop Protection Association (CPA) has said.

Dave Bench, who headed up the UK regulatory authority for plant protection products before taking up the reins at the CPA, explained that the UK vastly outperforms other EU member states when it comes to assessing and authorising new substances.

And he pointed out EU farmers would suffer as a result of losing the UK’s regulatory capacity after Brexit, with other member states unwilling to provide the resource necessary to meet legal deadlines for assessing new active substances and reviewing existing ones.

The International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) has launched its European Winter Wheat Hub which aims to accelerate research discoveries from the UK and globally into commercial plant breeding.

The hub will combine novel traits discovered by collaborative international teams into a range of high performing European winter wheat genetic backgrounds for assessment and use in winter wheat breeding programmes.

BASF, KWS, RAGT and Syngenta have entered a collaboration with NIAB to provide a translational pipeline supporting European winter wheat improvement.

A type of wrinkled ‘super pea’ may help control blood sugar levels and could reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, suggests a new study.

The research, from scientists at Imperial College London, the John Innes Centre, Quadram Institute Bioscience and University of Glasgow, suggests incorporating the peas into foods, in the form of whole pea seeds or flour, may help tackle the global type 2 diabetes epidemic.

The work, published in the journal Nature Food and funded by the BBSRC, focused on a naturally occurring type of pea. Unlike regular (smooth) peas, they contain higher amounts of ‘resistant starch’, which takes longer for the body to break down.

A farm-lab experimenting with some of the latest agri-tech has been opened by Barclays as part of its network of co-working spaces to help start-ups develop.

The farm, located at Lincoln University's Riseholme research campus, will offer entrepreneurs and researchers access to some of the latest technology.

The partnership between Barclays and the university aims to support farmers as they tackle ongoing challenges in applying agri-tech.

A consortium of nine UK universities and research institutes, including Rothamsted, are to create a joint PhD training centre focused on developing the next generation of interdisciplinary food systems experts.

Part of £47.5 million of UK Government funding earmarked to transform the UK’s food chains, the £5 million Centre for Doctoral Training will be led from the National Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich.

US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has warned global adherence to rules set out in the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy would double world food prices and plunge millions more people into food insecurity.

The EU strategy is part of the European Green Deal, which sets out a roadmap to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

It includes targets to reduce the use of pesticides by 50 per cent, fertiliser by 20 per cent and sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals by 50 per cent by 2030.

A partial ban on the use of the weedkiller glyphosate has been announced in France. The French government plans to phase out the use of glyphosate-based products by 1 January, 2021 – except where there are no viable alternatives to the herbicide.

The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES) published the rules of its assessment of non-chemical alternatives on Friday (9 October).

ANSES said glyphosate will be banned for use on arable crops, including cereals, oilseed rape and sunflowers, when the land has been ploughed between crops.

Potential investment in new breeding techniques such as gene editing is being stifled by current EU rules, plant breeding firms say.

The survey of 62 European and UK companies confirmed very strong commercial interest in using new techniques across a wide range of crop species and traits.

However, it also showed the negative impact on EU-based research and investment of a July 2018 European Court ruling which classified varieties developed using these techniques as GMOs.