The U.S. government is testing four potential bird flu vaccines for poultry, officials said on Friday, after more than 58 million chickens, turkeys and other birds have died in the nation's worst outbreak ever.

The trials, conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service, are the first step in a lengthy process toward the possible first use of vaccines to protect U.S. poultry from the lethal virus.

Bird flu, also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), has killed hundreds of millions of birds around the world, raising interest in vaccines. The virus is largely spread by wild birds that transmit it to poultry.

Insect-borne livestock diseases that were once confined to the tropics are increasingly likely to threaten farms in the UK as climate change expands the number of countries where they can thrive.

A 2019 study, Bluetongue Risk Under Future Climates, which looked at how changing temperatures in northern Europe might affect outbreaks of bluetongue virus, suggested that an outbreak typically expected once every 20 years could become almost an annual occurrence by the 2070s in a worst-case climate change scenario.

One of the authors, Andrew Morse, says the UK is already vulnerable to vector-borne diseases but, as the temperature increases, the risks will be much higher. “We expect that risk forecasting and early, accurate disease detection, along with efficient strategies for disease control, will become increasingly vital in future, warmer climates.”

Disease outbreaks and the impact on production could be costing the UK pig herd more than £850m a year, according to a new study carried out for the AHDB by the universities of Liverpool and Bern in Switzerland.

It compared a hypothetical, perfect UK pig farm without any losses, against existing industry averages. The difference between perfection and average was £858m a year across the whole UK pig herd, or more than double the approximate value of the industry.

AHDB animal health and welfare scientist Miranda Bowden-Doyle said that although it was impossible to achieve perfection, the study underlined the potential costs of disease. Dr Bowden-Doyle explained that disease costs were not only financial but had serious knock-on effects for animal welfare and the environment.

Leading UK scientists have dismissed government plans to provide a UK alternative to the EU’s €95bn research and innovation programme, Horizon, saying that being a member of a major international programme is essential to the country’s future.

Last week, in an attempt to reassure the science sector, the government announced plans to set up a £14bn post-Brexit alternative to the UK’s membership of Horizon, which would come into operation if ministers could not agree on the terms of an “associate membership” of the EU scheme with Brussels.

Currently, negotiations are under way on an associate membership deal, but the main sticking point is how much the UK would have to pay into the seven-year programme to secure participation.

A pioneering low carbon wheat flour to be used in the production of bread and other staple foods is being jointly developed by German agricultural trading company AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG, Dutch fertilizer manufacturer OCI Global, and Dossche Mills, a leading manufacturer and supplier of raw materials for bakeries.

The wheat is already growing in fields in Germany and will be harvested in summer 2023. This means that the lower carbon flour can be distributed to food manufacturers at the end of 2023 and early 2024.

The flour is made from wheat grown with OCI's lower carbon Nutramon fertilizer. Compared to conventional fertilizers, this has a lower greenhouse gas balance up to a 50% reduction (cradle-to-gate). The lower carbon fertilizer is linked to biomethane derived from agricultural waste and residue streams as an alternative for natural gas.

A new project aims to tackle the lack of seasonal labour in the UK horticulture industry as researchers look to accelerate the delivery of robotic crop systems.

Agri-OpenCore aims to slash the time and cost of developing a robotic harvesting system that achieves parity with human picking. As part of it, researchers want to develop commercial systems for tomato and strawberry harvesting that achieve human-picking-cost-parity in two years.

There is currently no robotic harvesting system that can match the speed of human picking. It comes as many crops have gone unpicked this year, leading to large amounts of unnecessary waste.

England is not ready for the unavoidable impacts of global warming, the government's advisers on climate change say in a new report.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said the government hasn't achieved any of its targets and needed a policy "step change" to avoid loss of life.

The CCC reviews the government's adaptation plans - preparations to cope with the effects of global warming. The government said it would take the recommendations into account.

Three cutting-edge projects will receive a share of over £9 million in funding to carry out research and development on proposals to boost farming productivity.

The funding will support projects developing robotic crop harvesting for horticulture and an autonomous system to change cows’ bedding to improve productivity. The funding, announced by Defra, will also go toward a more environmentally-friendly approach to potato cultivation.

The three projects are being supported through the Large R&D Partnership competition, which is part of the government’s £270m Farming Innovation Programme.

Farmers are one step closer to tapping into gene editing technology, after the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act has made its way through Parliament.

The Act will remove precision bred, or ‘gene edited’, products from the scope of GMO legislation, bringing rules in line with other countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Argentina.

The British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) has hailed the announcement as hugely significant for Britain’s plant breeders, because it is the first time in more than two decades that regulations have been brought forward which seek to enable and support the use of genetic innovation in agriculture.

The UK government’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill is set to receive royal assent, the final step towards the new legislation on gene editing.

The bill has passed through both houses of parliament and it will soon be signed into law. A date for royal assent is yet to be scheduled, but Farmers Weekly understands this is only weeks away.

Outside of the EU’s rules on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), it aims to develop a new legislative framework in England for products developed through new plant breeding techniques, such as gene editing.