Tents for Pollination Control - Innovation to Improve Crop Breeding

"Innovation in agricultural practices is the basis of human civilisation as we know it. Plant breeding is one of the keystones of agricultural improvement; helping to provide more nutritious, disease resistant and high yielding crop varieties, capable of withstanding adverse climatic conditions, whilst minimising the ecological damage caused by intensive agriculture. Many technologies have been investigated to speed up the breeding process; including various genetic technologies (e.g. genetic modification, marker assisted selection or CRISPR/Cas9). This project aims to expand the capacity of breeders to scale up new varieties without introducing contamination by foreign pollen, by creating an advanced wind pollination (anemophilous) control tent (PCT) using specialised non-woven fabrics. Such a product will provide an affordable, flexible and user-friendly alternative to previous approaches (such as polytunnels, crop spacing techniques or emasculation). As the world's first dedicated anemophilous PCT, an innovative tent design is required to accommodate PBS' novel pollen proof materials that are scaled to a variety of sizes to control pollen flow for different crop varieties and growing conditions. Expertise in design of polytunnels and canvas structures will be deployed to avoid weaknesses that occur as the size of the tents increases, saving time and resources. Once developed, the PCT will be tested for applicability with customers.

Plant breeding in the UK is a £230m industry, with the impact of improved varieties being much greater. A British Society of Plant Breeders study, estimated a ROI of £40 for the production, processing and consumption of UK produced cereal-based products to every £1 spent on breeding -- for instance the gross value of yield increase in wheat alone, attributable to plant breeders is £373-445m p.a. In addition, improved varieties offer environmental benefits such as reduced Nitrogen run-off (estimated 50% weed sward uses 17% of Nitrogen applied vs 100% for newly replanted ryegrass).

In addition to allowing the benefits of improved varieties to be felt more rapidly and more fully by UK agriculture, this project also extends the UK's reputation for agricultural technology innovation, and will increase global exports, essential to the post-Brexit economy."