Westminster’s efforts to identify post-Brexit business opportunities have concluded that the UK should embrace gene edited crops now it is no longer party to the European Union's limitations on biotech.

The proposal was one of 120 recommendations contained in a report issued by Prime Minister Johnson's Task Force on Innovation Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR), which argued that Brexit offered a ‘one-off opportunity’ to develop new domestic regulations to 'boost productivity, encourage competition and stimulate innovation'.

TIGRR's report has been welcomed by the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture, Julian Sturdy MP, who said it was a 'major step forward' in liberating the UK’s strengths in agricultural science and innovation.

Switzerland has rejected proposals that would have made it the first European country to ban the use of synthetic pesticides in agriculture. The provisional results of a nationwide referendum on Sunday (13 June) revealed that 60.6% of voters rejected proposals to outlaw artificial pesticides.

The initiative – For a Switzerland free from synthetic pesticides – was launched by Future 3, a citizens’ group led by a vinter and a soil biology professor from Neuchatel University. It had sought a domestic ban within 10 years, and a ban on imports of food crops grown using such pesticides.

Space technology has helped create a new interactive map breaking down agricultural land use in Scotland. Crops in every field farmed have been recorded by satellite imagery from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Copernicus Satellite Programme.

The Scottish Crop Map uses data from 2019 to predict the crop types using radar images and to recognise the crops growing in nearly 400,000 fields in Scotland. The map has been developed by the Scottish government working in collaboration with EDINA at the University of Edinburgh.

Scientists have refined a transformational process that allows nitrate to be captured from drinking water for use in agriculture as a liquid fertiliser.

The NTPlus project, focuses on how nitrates can be efficiently removed from drinking water for use as a resource, rather than disposal as a waste.

In doing so, this can decrease agriculture’s dependence on the carbon-intensive Haber-Bosch and Mannheim fertiliser manufacturing processes.

A new project is looking at how machine learning could help predict the intakes of dairy cows - a key research objective for many years.

Scientists in the UK are examining a 'precision feeding' approach for dairy cows as part of a new machine learning project.

Being able to improve the accuracy to predict the intakes of dairy cows, either for the whole herd or for individual cows, has been a key research objective for years.

Leading scientific experts are calling for governments around the world to come together and fund a new international research platform, to reduce the impact of major wheat pathogens and improve global food security.

The John Innes Centre is calling for an internationally coordinated approach to deliver a new ‘R-Gene Atlas’, which would help identify new genetic solutions conferring disease resistance for crops that could be bred into commercial wheat varieties.

Globally, we lose one fifth of the projected wheat yield annually to pests and pathogens totalling losses of 209 million tonnes, worth £22 billion, according to JIC.

The government has today responded to its consultation on the future bovine TB (bTB) strategy and confirmed it will no longer license new intensive badger culls after 2022, alongside shortening and restricting supplementary badger cull licensing.

The NFU does not support the measures because it goes against the science and evidence, which shows badger culling is an effective measure to control the spread of bTB, alongside other controls.

The trial, run by researchers at the Crop Science Centre in Cambridge, will evaluate whether improved crop interaction with naturally occurring soil fungi can result in more sustainable food production.

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The Tenant Farmers’ Association (TFA) has accused ex-Defra adviser Professor Sir Ian Boyd of lying, after he claimed livestock farmers were being paid by the Government to damage the environment.

It is not the first time Sir Ian, who was the department’s chief scientific adviser from 2012 to 2019, has caused controversy in the farming community. In 2018, he shocked attendees of the IAFRI Metaldehyde Conference by saying the UK’s agriculture system was designed in the 19th century and ‘has not changed much since’. And in November last year, farm groups criticised his call for people to cut down on eating red meat in order to meet the 2050 net zero emissions target.

Now Sir Ian has said to The Guardian: “Most of the livestock production in the UK is unprofitable without public subsidy. The public are subsidising the production of livestock to produce environmental damage, all the way from greenhouse gas emissions to water pollution. Why should we continue to do that? It is not sensible.”

A new partnership between Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and ADAS plans to give farmers greater access to independent advice backed by world-leading research and innovation.

The joint venture will see SRUC and ADAS pool their expertise to offer farmers a UK-wide agricultural and rural knowledge service – including a new digital platform, consultancy services, education and training courses for the food and farming sectors.

ADAS has 400 staff working across England and Wales. SRUC’s SAC Consulting arm has 24 offices across Scotland and Northern England. It offers a range of specialisms in soil nutrition, livestock and agronomy, branding and marketing of food products, and analytical testing.

If the European Union would take a more 'science-led' attitude to genetically modified crops, it could hugely reduce its use of pesticides.

According to 'consumer advocacy group' the Consumer Choice Center, it is time to reassess the existing EU regulation of biotechnology.

In an open letter to Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, the pro-GM campaigners emphasised the benefits of a 'pro-consumer, pro-science and pro-innovation approach'.