AGRI-SCIENCE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY NETWORK: AGRI-net

Completed

Not Energy Related
Renewable Energy Sources(Bio-Energy, Applications for heat and electricity)
Renewable Energy Sources(Bio-Energy, Production of other biomass-derived fuels (incl. Production from wastes))

Basic and strategic applied research

BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES (Biological Sciences)
BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES (Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science)
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Chemistry)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr LMC Barter
Chemistry
Imperial College London

Standard

EPSRC

27 May 2011

12 May 2014

36 months

£233,989

Chemical synthesis

London

NC : Physical Sciences

Dr LMC Barter, Chemistry, Imperial College London

Dr R Woscholski, Life Sciences - Cell & Molecular Biology, Imperial College London

Project Contact, Syngenta

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

21/09/11