Up to £30 million has been awarded to new farming projects which aim to boost UK food production sustainably, the government has confirmed. The funding, set to be awarded to 58 projects, is part of Defra's Farming Innovation Programme, run alongside UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) and Innovate UK.

Projects to benefit include FungiAlert, which seeks to develop biopesticides using fungal strains to help tackle pests in wheat and to pin-point the genetics for creating slug resistant wheat.

Others have a more sustainability focus, with Defra awarding genetics firm Genus over £2m to spearhead research to reduce methane emissions in cattle by 17% per generation. And Synergy Farm Health has been awarded nearly £400,000 to carry out a longitudinal study with an antibody test to detect bovine TB in bulk milk.

Rothamsted Research will receive more than £60m in new funding to help spearhead important agricultural and food security research.

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has announced it is going to fund strategically important research at Rothamsted over the next five years.

The projects will centre around crop resilience, nutrition and health, food safety and food security, with a focus on more sustainable farming.

A High Court judge has rejected a legal challenge brought by animal welfare campaigners over the use of fast-growing broiler chickens for meat consumption.

The Humane League UK, which brought the legal challenge, had argued fast-growing breeds suffer health and welfare problems. The campaign group claimed conventional meat birds, which they say grow unnaturally large and fast, breach the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007.

Defra challenged the claims, insisting there is no scientific proof fast-growing birds suffer health problems as a matter of course. The UK has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world and all farm animals, including broilers, are protected by “robust animal health and welfare legislation”, it said.

British households have paid £7bn since Brexit to cover the extra cost of trade barriers on food imports from the EU, according to researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE).

The university’s latest report estimating the impact of leaving the bloc on UK food prices found that trade barriers were consistently hampering imports, pushing up bills by an average £250.

The cost of food in the UK had rocketed by 25% since 2019, the researchers calculated, but if the post-Brexit trade restrictions were not in place then this increase would be only 17% – nearly a third lower.

Brazil has declared a six-month animal health emergency after several cases of avian flu were found in wild birds. Seven cases have been reported in Espirito Santo state, with another discovered in Rio de Janeiro state.

The emergency declaration makes it easier for the government to now bring in measures to stop the highly infectious H5N1 virus from spreading.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of chicken meat, with annual sales of nearly $10bn (£8bn). Authorities say the cases were found far away from Brazil's main areas of production in the south of the country.

Businesses and entrepreneurs are being sought to take up residence in a new multi-million pound innovation centre seeking to create links between science and the farming industry.

Set to open in Inverness later this year, the Rural and Veterinary Innovation Centre (RAVIC) will bring together scientists, innovators and businesses to create new products, services and solutions to overcome sector challenges, including animal disease, climate change and food security.

There will also be an emphasis on bioscience, including animal health, as RAVIC is to form part of Scotland’s new School of Veterinary Medicine. The £12.5m project is being led by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), and funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Scottish Funding Council.

Sixteen agricultural universities across the UK have joined forces to address farming industry challenges and further the impact of their research. A new joint strategy outlines how the group of universities are working together to address the challenges that are currently faced within UK agriculture.

It was launched by the Agricultural Universities Council (AUC), which includes the likes of Scotland's Rural College, the Royal Agricultural University, and Hartpury, among 13 others. It follows a year-long investigation by the AUC into the farming industry's priorities, current research activities and its strengths and weaknesses.

The government has pledged to commit to farmers' interests in future trade deals, as well as boost UK fruit and vegetable production, as part of a new package of support.

The raft of pledges has been set out by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of the Farm to Fork Summit hosted at Downing Street today (16 May).

The government also announced up to £30 million of investment to drive forward the use of precision breeding technologies.

High-tech portable chambers for measuring methane emissions from sheep are being used in the UK for the first time. New Zealand-designed Portable Accumulation Chambers (PACs) have been unveiled as the latest tool in mitigating agricultural greenhouse gases.

The trailer-mounted chambers can predict methane emissions in individual sheep from a variety of systems, including at pasture, as well as in multiple locations. The chambers collect air samples and then analyse methane concentration, showing which genetics, feed types and systems generate the highest emission levels.

Scientists have collaborated to produce the first gene-edited calf with resistance to bovine viral diarrhea virus, a virus that costs the U.S. cattle sector billions of dollars annually. The recent study published in PNAS Nexus results from a collaboration between the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the University of Kentucky and industry partners, Acceligen and Recombinetics, Inc.

BVDV is one of the most significant viruses affecting the health and well-being of cattle worldwide, and researchers have been studying it since the 1940s when it was first recognized. This virus does not affect humans but is highly contagious among cattle and can cause severe respiratory and intestinal diseases.

Despite more than 50 years of vaccine availability, controlling BVDV disease remains a problem since vaccines are not always effective in stopping transmission.