13 Feb 2015
Are you up to up to speed with the new science and technologies emerging across the fields of crop research? Do you know where to find ideas, inspiration and unexpected collaborators? Multi-disciplinary approaches are essential to meet the mounting challenges involved in growing enough food. Following last year's sell-out event, SCI Agrisciences Group and partners the Royal Society of Chemistry and AGRI-net are co-hosting the 2015 conference, focusing particularly on crop protection. Advances in yield potential are of little use in practice if weeds, pests and diseases are not effectively controlled. The past two decades have seen pressures intensify: fewer new crop protection active ingredients emerging from R&D pipelines; a dearth of new modes of action; widespread resistance in weeds, pests and diseases; and increasingly stringent regulatory requirements to be met.
The conference will start with an overview of progress to date in implementing the UK's Agri-Tech Strategy - an important initiative encouraging diverse stakeholders to tackle food production issues. Speakers from Rothamsted, Bayer Crop Sciences and Syngenta will discuss new insights into the mechanisms of pest resistance and how new approaches to finding innovative active ingredients are addressing crop protection problems. Other speakers will show how 'lateral thinking' is also playing a part. Why not attempt to boost plant immunity to ward off fungal infections, or rejuvenate the not-so-new idea of using synergists to slow the metabolism of insecticides in pests to overcome resistance? New technologies being used in synthetic biology and precision farming are also on the agenda for the day. These technologies are very different, with both harnessing the diversity in information and communications technology and engineering sciences alongside chemistry and biology.
Offers of posters, with the opportunity to give a short 'flash' presentation, are welcomed. All those with interests in growing better crops will have the chance to catch up on cutting-edge developments at SCI's newly refurbished premises in Belgrave Square, London, on 22 April.
For more information or to book your place at this event, click on the link below.
Dr Alan Baylis
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