Professor Uta Paszkowski has been elected a member of the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Uta Paszkowski is the leader of the Cereal Symbiosis group at the Crop Science Centre, and described this achievement as ‘humbling’.

The Leopoldina originated in 1652 as a classical scholarly society and now has 1,600 members from almost all branches of science. In 2008 the Leopoldina was appointed as the German National Academy of Sciences and has two major objectives. The first is to represent the German scientific community internationally, and the second is to provide policymakers and the public with science-based advice.

The British Science Association has announced that the Director of the Crop Science Centre, Professor Giles Oldroyd, will be the Agriculture and Food Section President for the British Science Festival 2023.

Section Presidents are nominated for making a significant contribution to their scientific field, and once selected they play a crucial role in shaping the British Science Festival programme each year.

The Agriculture and Food section of the festival will focus on how plants benefit from associations with friendly bacteria and fungi and how this can be used in sustainable agriculture.

The British Science Festival 2023, taking place 7-10 September, hosted by the University of Exeter

The Leverhulme Trust have awarded Crop Science Centre scientists a grant for developing technology capable of overcoming the resistance of crop-damaging nematode worms to genetic alteration. This technology will be similar to the COVID-19 vaccine, where a special molecule is wrapped in a fatty layer to protect it and make it easier to deliver.

Nematodes are tiny parasitic worms that cause over $100 billion of damage to crops every year. By enabling fundamental research into their biology, this technology could not only help accelerate research into controlling these crop-damaging parasites, but also other genetically ‘hard-to-edit’ species.

Sebastian Eves-van den Akker, who will be leading this research, said “It's like some covid vaccines, where you wrap an mRNA in a lipid nanoparticle. We want to use this technology to deliver CRISPR into the germline of nematodes, thereby editing their sex cells so that their progeny are genome edited.

This will allow us to engage in fundamental research into the role of genes, in this case in nematodes. Understanding which nematode genes are important for parasitism could lead to new ways to control theses parasites in agriculture.”

This research will build on the work of the TransPPN consortium, led by the University of Cambridge, an open global knowledge exchange forum aimed at making the genetic modification of plant-parasitic nematodes a reality.

If successful, the new technology will allow genome editing in the parasitic nematode worms, which could help reveal understanding that has a long-lasting impact on global agriculture. This could be a game-changer, offering a low-cost, simple, and efficient way to edit the genes of pests.

On March 23 2023 the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill passed into law. In response to the bill passing, the director of the Crop Science Centre, Professor Giles Oldroyd said “The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill is a crucial development that opens up new possibilities for science and innovation to transform the pace of agricultural research and development. The UK, along with countries around the world, is in a race to climate-proof food systems, and conventional breeding alone cannot keep up with the rapidly changing challenges of new growing conditions.

"Precision breeding through gene editing allows scientists to accelerate what might otherwise be possible through natural processes and conventional breeding over a longer time frame. UK science and research has made extraordinary advances in this field over the last 30 years, and this law expands the remit of scientific exploration, which can only bring benefits."