Posted 9 June 2014
Harper Adams University welcomes this week’s UK-wide campaign to highlight the value and importance of university research to our everyday lives.
Universities Week 2014 is being launched today at the Natural History Museum in London, where a week-long public event will include research stations, pop-up performances, debates and live research demonstrations, covering a range of research themes.
Ahead of this year’s campaign, Universities UK conducted a poll to understand the challenges members of the public most want university research to address - for them personally, the UK and the most pressing global issues of our time.
More than half of all respondents - 57% - wanted to ensure the world has enough food and water. The food security challenge is one Harper Adams University takes very seriously. The majority of our researchers are working hard to develop understanding of and solutions to food production problems.
In our Agricultural Engineering Innovation Centre, and through the National Centre for Precision Farming, which Harper Adams leads, “smart” farming systems are being investigated and developed in a bid to reduce input, increase yields, improve soil quality, preserve natural resources and improve overall efficiency.
Our Crop and Environment Research Centre provides a focus for the research carried out by academic staff in the Crop and Environment disciplines. The main areas of research involve producing food and non-food crops by sustainable methods. Crop protection is an important theme, studying forecasting, diagnostics, biocontrol, novel forms of control and the implications for food and environmental safety.
The Soil and Water Management Centre, established in 2013, aims to address the impact of increasingly intensified agricultural production systems on the soil, productivity and the downstream impact on water catchments and the broader environment.
The Centre for Integrated Pest Management, also new in 2013, is a multidisciplinary team addressing UK and global issues in agricultural, forestry and horticultural crop production with active research interests in entomology, chemical ecology, pest monitoring, application technology, nematology, pesticides, plant pathology and weed science. It has expertise in UK and tropical forestry, arable crops, horticultural crops, field vegetables, soft fruit and protected crops.
These are just four examples Harper Adams dedicated centres for agri-food research. Work at the University covers every stage of the process – from plough to plate.
For more information, visit the research section of our website: www.harper-adams.ac.uk/research/
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