News

  BBSRC and India's Department of Biotechnology (DBT) have announced a joint call for collaborative research proposals that underpin the use of genomics and associated bioinformatics approaches to address crop improvement. The call focuses on crops of interest to both the UK and India: wheat, brassicas and Solanaceae, which includes tomato, potato and aubergine. ... more »

Ash dieback: new management plan launched The government has produced a chalara or ash dieback management plan which sets out a number of actions to help reduce the spread of the disease. Ash trees suffering with the infection have been found widely across Europe and at sites across Great Britain, including at urban landscaping schemes, newly planted woodland nurseries and in the wider environment, totalling 427 confirmed cases to date. ... more »

Rothamsted Research has submitted an application to Defra to extend its current GM wheat field trial to include additional autumn-sown cadenza wheat. Rothamsted scientists believe it would be advantageous to gain further data from their experiment, in wheat planted at a different time of year and under different weather conditions with different aphid populations. This will give us additional data under a more diverse range of environmental conditions.     ... more »

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a refuge for 11 globally-threatened bird species. They are also a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1 million people. ... more »