Wheat, the most important food crop, is threatened by a blast disease pandemic. Now a new study, conducted by an … read more

The government’s food strategy has been announced today.   Prof Judy Buttriss, Visiting Professor in the School of Biosciences and … read more

Research, published in Nature Communications, reports that a 100% shift to organic farming could lead to a net increase in … read more

A new study published in Nature Communications suggests that emissions would be reduced as a result of organic farming, but … read more

Experts reacted to The future for food, farming and the environment which was published by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. read more

As part of a large field study, publishing in Scientific Reports, researchers investigate how they can optimise omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid accumulation in transgenic GM Camelina. read more

The effect of climate change on grasses such as wheat and rice is examined in a paper published in Biology Letters with the authors reporting that climate change is expected to outpace rate of adaptation. read more

The effect that climate change could have on future food production and wider health is the subject of a paper published in The Lancet journal, with the authors reporting their use of a model which suggests reductions in global food availability and an increase in related deaths by 2050. read more

An independent expert taskforce from the UK and USA have outlined key recommendations to safeguard against threats to food supplies in a new report for the Global Food Security programme today. The report highlights an increasing risk of global food supply disruptions and price spikes that could result from extreme weather events – such as heatwaves, droughts and floods – and offers new recommendations for mitigation. Although further work is needed to reduce uncertainty and better understand the way extreme weather may change, there is good evidence that extreme weather events, from intense storms to droughts and heatwaves, are increasing in frequency and severity. The report shows that severe ‘production shocks’ caused by extreme weather– whereby global food production is seriously disrupted – of a scale likely to occur once in a century under past conditions, may occur as frequently as once every 30 years as the world’s climate and global food supply systems change in the coming decades. read more

The SMC invited one of the UK’s leading experts on GM animals, Professor Helen Sang, to describe some of the on-going applications of GM technologies in farm animals and the issues around regulation and public acceptance. read more

MEPs voted through reforms to the Common Fisheries Policy, including measures to protect endangered stocks and a ban on “discards”, the practice of throwing unwanted dead fish back into the sea. read more

Findings published in Nature Climate Change suggest large-scale cultivation of biofuels in Europe could lead to increased human mortality and crop losses. read more

A sequencing and analysis of the bread wheat genome, published in Nature, identified genes associated with crop productivity and offers a valuable source of information on this important crop and future wheat improvement. read more

Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government is co-directing ReSource 2012, a new forum taking place in Oxford this July to tackle global resource scarcity.
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A paper in the journal Nature Biotechnology outlined how an gene found in wild varieties of rice has been incorporated into domesticated rice to provide tolerance to highly saline soils. read more

As BASF announced it would relocate its transgenic plant operations from Europe to the USA due to a “lack of acceptance for this technology”, the SMC circulated reaction from plant scientists. read more

Authors of a peer-reviewed report on energy from biomass, from Imperial College London and the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), came to the SMC to describe their key findings and address assumptions about population, diet, and land use as well as the speed at which improvements in food and energy crop production can be developed. read more

With the world’s seven billionth baby supposedly about to be born, experts gave their views on approaching this milestone. read more

Defra granted consent to Rothamsted Research to conduct a trial on GM wheat in 2012 and 2013. read more

The European Commission set out new plans for fisheries management. read more