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In today's Daily Digest, £30 million awarded to farming projects, Bayer's new precision health unit, a consortium to help make chemical manufacturing more efficient, and more.

Agrifood

Up to £30 million has been awarded to cutting-edge farming projects that will boost food production, move towards net zero, and create a more resilient and sustainable agricultural sector. The funding is all part of the Farming Innovation Programme, run by Defra in partnership with UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and delivered by Innovate UK, which is making £270 million in grants available before the end of the agricultural transition to fund research and development projects to help farmers and growers produce food more sustainably.

Following the completion of four substantial competitions under the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) Farming Innovation Programme, 50 projects have secured valuable funding.

Sustainability

BASF has updated its sustainability assessment method TripleS (Sustainable Solution Steering) to further develop its product portfolio in the direction of climate protection, resource efficiency and circular economy in the future and to meet the growing sustainability requirements in its markets with innovative solutions. The TripleS method has been in place at BASF since 2012 and was updated last year. It has become a strong innovation driver for BASF, and the company is currently re-evaluating all its 45,000 products on this basis.

A major consortium led by Imperial and BASF is to help make chemical manufacturing more efficient, resilient, and sustainable through advancement of flow chemistry. Imperial will receive £17.8 million from the EPSRC and industry partners for the Innovative Continuous Manufacturing of Industrial Chemicals (IConIC) programme, under the EPSRC Prosperity Partnership programme in a consortium of organisations from across the chemicals value chain.

Health and Wellbeing

The Consumer Health Division of Bayer has launched a business unit focused on developing new precision health products across its range of everyday health categories. Bayer will prioritise developing products that enable people to take greater control of their own personal health through digital solutions that facilitate more informed choices based on personal insights and novel delivery mechanisms.