AGRI-SCIENCE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY NETWORK: AGRI-net

The food, fibre and fuel requirements of an ever-increasing population are some of the major challenges facing current society. This means that there is a clear need for innovation and technology to increase crop productivity in a sustainable way. Key targets include increasing photosynthetic efficiency, reducing losses caused by pests and diseases, enhancing food safety and quality for better nutrition, minimising waste throughout the food supply chain, and improving the processing of biomass materials for fuels and other plant derived chemicals and materials.

It will be vital that existing and new technologies be applied across the agri-sciences. Multidisciplinary approaches being the likely drivers enabling this. Chemical Biology through physical science innovation (in e.g. chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering) is able to tackle biological problems on a molecular level and in so doing will lead to the development of novel technologies that will address future agri-science needs.

This proposed chemical biology AGri-sciences Research Information network (AGRI-Net) will bring together researchers and end-users from academia, industry and government agencies. It will enhance interactions between the Agri-science and Chemical Biology communities, and stimulate the development and facilitate the translation of novel technologies to key stakeholders in the agri-sciences.This will lead to the development of high-impact multi-disciplinary research which is targeted at one of the world's grand challenges, Crop Sustainability.

The aim of the network is to foster cross-fertilisation between different research disciplines and provide added value to the Agri-science research landscape. In this context, Chemical biology is the application of tools and technologies generated by the physical sciences (ie chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering) to bottlenecks limiting progress within the agri-science research environment (ie agri-chemistry, pest control, crop efficiency and protection, etc.).

This will be achieved via a number of mechanisms. In the first instance a virtual networking environment will be created, via a web-based community portal. This will foster interactions between stakeholders. AGRI-net will also host meetings and showcase and creativity ideas generation events in conjunction with industrial partners.

It will identify promising ideas arising from these events and fund feasibility study to test out these new concepts and approaches.These projects will rapidly enhance the network, engaging all communities and will result in a corresponding increase of pace and impact of the research efforts, as these initial studies will be used to pump-prime large scale funding opportunities.

AGRI-net will expose the communities to new tools and technologies that could advance progress in plant, fungal and insect biology and deepen knowledge needed to overcome bottlenecks in developing new solutions to improve crop protection and sustainability.

Given that Food and Energy security are two of the major challenges that face society today, and have been identified as key strategic priorities for future research funding by both the BBSRC and EPSRC, the nucleus formed by AGRI-net is expected to evolve and grow over time. New collaborative projects and alliances on an international scale will be generated, via current links with international academic and industrial partners, and through the introduction of new members to the network.

The agri-science chemical biology network will have an immediate impact on the participating communities of scientists in academia and industry. Bringing together several disciplines will cross-fertilise thought processes and foster new ideas and solutions. Exposure to innovations driven by the physical sciences will add another dimension and thus value to the current agri-sciences undertakings. This will benefit in the interim industry (agri-food industry) as well as interested government agencies. The latter stakeholders are represented in the network to be created here, which will aid the process of translation from innovation to application. As this network is concerned about improving the productivity, pace and translation of the research associated with agri-sciences, this enterprise will impact on the agricultural economy (e.g. farming) and agrochemical industry (e.g. Syngenta). This in turn will have an influence on the wider ecology and environment of the areas utilized for agri-food production.

The network will facilitate multidisciplinary thinking and problem solving by combining expertise and excellence across scientific boundaries. Academic communities participating will be exposed to new tools and technologies that could advance progress in plant, fungal and insect biology. A deeper knowledge in these areas is needed to overcome bottlenecks in developing novel solutions to improve crop protection and sustainability.

Chemical biology solutions has had a great impact on the biomedical sciences in the past decade, and it is anticipated that the application of chemical biology approaches on the agri-sciences will leave a similar impression. In particular, species-specific agrochemicals, new chemical approaches to increase plant growth, novel proteomic and metabolomic techniques, and out-of-the-box approaches for pest control could evolve from this network.

Dissemination of the networks's agenda and projects via the Internet, conferences and ultimately publications of the successful research outcomes will be a major mechanism to reach the academic community. Industrial stakeholders will be able to translate the multidisciplinary solutions to their product pipeline, which in turn will benefit the general public and national economy. While this will take some time, the influence of the industrial stakeholders on the founding and shaping of this network will probably hasten this process. Industry and academia will be jointly directing the research vision and programmes within this network. This will favour more application-oriented research and thus promote the up-take of the generated knowledge, tools and technologies by the agri-science industry. The technologies and tools generated will on a longer time scale result in additional intellectual property rights, manufacturing, marketing and trading for the UK economy.