A transformative national research infrastructure, underpinned by work led from the University of Nottingham is set to reshape the future of plant and crop research and innovation across the UK.
PhenomUK, announced today, is a £35.4M, six-year project funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and led by BBSRC.
It builds on the successful UK Plant and Crop Phenotyping Infrastructure Preliminary Activity and PhenomUK Technology Touching Life network, both multidisciplinary endeavours spanning Nottingham's Schools of Computer Science (Professor Tony Pridmore, Ms Claire Hayes, Dr Valerio Giuffrida) and Biosciences (Dr Darren Wells), the Universities of Sheffield, Essex, Edinburgh and Manchester and Rothamsted Research.
I'm delighted about the funding for the next stage of this vital work. It's been a long road to reach this point but both the phenomics community and the University have supported PhenomUK from the beginning. It's great that we can now work directly to establish a true nationwide research infrastructure for plant phenomics.
PhenomUK will accelerate the development of new plant and crop varieties securing the UK's long term food supply by ensuring they are resilient to:
- Changing climate
- Biodiversity loss
- Invasive non-native species.
The investment will establish a national research and innovation infrastructure spanning crop growth stages from seed to field, boosting our ability to measure the performance of new varieties in realistic environments and at scale.
Invasive non-native species cost the British economy approximately £1.9 billion per year in direct impacts, with extreme weather costing UK farmers over £1 billion in arable crop income annually.
Crop improvement programmes require detailed understanding of plant development and behaviour in varied and rapidly changing growth environments.
Research enabled by PhenomUK will drive advances in national food production and reduce pesticide use.
The project aligns with the Government's ambition to position the UK as a global leader in the plant and crop breeding market.
This will accelerate the application of precision breeding using Engineering Biology to create deployable agricultural solutions.
