6 Feb 2025
Landmark is Niab's corporate publication, published three times a year, featuring in-depth technical articles on all aspects of Niab crop research and services.
Available to all - access the online flip-book and downloadable PDF versions of Issue 58 – Spring 2025.
Niab Landmark: Winter 2024/25
In this issue:
- Today's innovations to feed tomorrow's world - Niab CEO Mario Caccamo welcomes the latest news on the Precision Breeding Act's secondary legislation, highlighting the future opportunities of innovative farming technologies to improve productivity, achieve environmental targets, draw inward investment, and ensure the practical application of plant science.
- New varieties for 2025 - Crop specialists Clare Leaman and Colin Peters introduce the new cereals, pulses and oilseeds varieties that have made the Recommended and Descriptive List from the AHDB and PGRO, highlighting the ones to watch and summarising their strengths and weaknesses.
- Introducing Growing Green - Following a successful pilot, a new sustainability training programme is launching in Kent and Medway for horticultural growers. Niab's Dr Flora O'Brien introduces Growing Green, inspiring and training growers to implement innovation that not only reduces their carbon footprint, but helps create new value and revenues from their production.
- SFI 2024 Expanded Offer - The third in a series of articles on the Sustainable Farming Incentive, where Phil Humphrey, Will Vaughan-France and Greg Crawford advise how to best incorporate ELMS and SFI into farming businesses, including a comprehensive case study outlining all the options and final decision.
- Reviewing innovation in agritech - Director of Commercialisation Michael Gifford outlines some of the macroscopic trends in agritech, particularly in data, AI, genetics and robotics, discusses what is coming, why and when and highlights the issues facing the sector.
- Cabbage stem flea beetle - Research by Niab and its partners over the past few years has improved and widened our understanding of the lifecycle, control and management of cabbage stem flea beetle, a major pest of oilseed rape in the UK. Colin Peters discusses the impact of this new knowledge, together with the work showing how cultivations straight after harvest reduce adult flea beetle numbers in the soil.