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Inventors, scientists and developers have a chance to win £10,000 and national recognition for their farming innovations by entering the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) and Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) 2016 Practice with Science Award.

The £10,000 Award will recognise applied scientific work that has resulted in particular benefits to the agricultural industry and brought practical on-farm benefits or in related industries such as food and energy.

Lucy Frazer, MP for south east Cambridgeshire, visited The National Institute of Agricultural Botany’s (NIAB) Park Farm research site near Histon on Wednesday, for a tour of the crop research centre’s facilities and to hear the plans for future expansion.

UK crop research organisation NIAB has significantly strengthened its capabilities in data science with the appointment of Professor Mario Caccamo, currently director of The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC), to lead the Cambridge-based institute’s expanding bioinformatics and agri-data activities. 

NIAB is a leading plant science institute, covering plant breeding and crop agronomy, with customers and clients from across the UK agricultural industry. The NIAB Director's Day is an invite only event, for CEOs, MDs and senior staff from other industry companies and organisations, including government, to find out more about NIAB and its research.

With harvest fast approaching NIAB LabTest is offering a 20% discount on our three most popular seed test packages.

Welcome to SIPScene - the Sustainable Intensification Research Platform's, otherwise known as SIP, first newsletter - explaining who and what SIP is and how it will benefit UK farmers. Funded by Defra, NIAB is the lead organisation for SIP's Project 1.

Cambridge’s reputation of providing world-class research and development has been strengthened, as two businesses are awarded funding of £80,318 via The Eastern Agri-Tech Growth Initiative.

The five-day course will include:

A day on Fusarium ear blight of winter wheat, with an inoculated trial showing symptoms caused by the different pathogens, cultivar evaluation, pathogen diagnostics.

A day on regulations for mycotoxins, sampling and rapid test methods – especially those linked to Fusarium.

NIAB has awarded its Cereals Cup to the winter wheat variety Skyfall from RAGT and its Variety Cup to the perennial ryegrass Abergreen from IBERS and Germinal.

NIAB chief executive Dr Tina Barsby presented the awards to RAGT’s UK senior wheat breeder Celia Bequain and IBERS’ Director Professor Mike Gooding at the 2015 Cereals Event.