Tents for Pollination Control - Innovation to Improve Crop Breeding

他说：“农业创新是人类文明的基础，植物育种是农业改良的其中一个重点，有助培育更有营养、抗病和高产的作物品种，使其能抵御恶劣的气候条件，同时尽量减少密集农业对生态造成的破坏。已经研究了许多技术来加速育种过程;包括各种遗传技术（例如遗传修饰，标记辅助选择或CRISPR/Cas9）。该项目旨在扩大育种者的能力，通过使用专门的无纺布创建先进的风媒传粉（风媒传粉）控制帐篷（PCT），在不引入外来花粉污染的情况下扩大新品种的规模。这种产品将为以前的方法（如多通道、作物间隔技术或去雄）提供一种负担得起、灵活和用户友好的替代方法。作为世界上第一个专用的风媒PCT，需要一个创新的帐篷设计来容纳PBS的新型防花粉材料，这些材料可以缩放到各种尺寸，以控制不同作物品种和生长条件下的花粉流动。将部署多通道和帆布结构设计方面的专业知识，以避免随着帐篷尺寸的增加而出现的弱点，从而节省时间和资源。一旦开发完成，PCT将接受客户的适用性测试。在英国，植物育种是一个价值2.3亿英镑的产业，其中改良品种的影响要大得多。英国植物育种家协会的一项研究估计，英国生产的谷物产品的生产，加工和消费的投资回报率为40英镑，每花费1英镑用于育种-例如，仅小麦产量增加的总价值，归因于植物育种家每年为3.73 - 4.45亿英镑。此外，改良品种还具有环境效益，如减少氮流失（估计50%的杂草草地使用了17%的氮肥，而新种植的黑麦草使用了100%的氮肥）。除了让英国农业更快、更充分地感受到改良品种的好处外，该项目还扩大了英国在农业技术创新方面的声誉，并将增加全球出口，对英国脱欧后的经济至关重要。"

"Innovation in agricultural practices is the basis of human civilisation as we know it. Plant breeding is one of the keystones of agricultural improvement; helping to provide more nutritious, disease resistant and high yielding crop varieties, capable of withstanding adverse climatic conditions, whilst minimising the ecological damage caused by intensive agriculture. Many technologies have been investigated to speed up the breeding process; including various genetic technologies (e.g. genetic modification, marker assisted selection or CRISPR/Cas9). This project aims to expand the capacity of breeders to scale up new varieties without introducing contamination by foreign pollen, by creating an advanced wind pollination (anemophilous) control tent (PCT) using specialised non-woven fabrics. Such a product will provide an affordable, flexible and user-friendly alternative to previous approaches (such as polytunnels, crop spacing techniques or emasculation). As the world's first dedicated anemophilous PCT, an innovative tent design is required to accommodate PBS' novel pollen proof materials that are scaled to a variety of sizes to control pollen flow for different crop varieties and growing conditions. Expertise in design of polytunnels and canvas structures will be deployed to avoid weaknesses that occur as the size of the tents increases, saving time and resources. Once developed, the PCT will be tested for applicability with customers.Plant breeding in the UK is a £230m industry, with the impact of improved varieties being much greater. A British Society of Plant Breeders study, estimated a ROI of £40 for the production, processing and consumption of UK produced cereal-based products to every £1 spent on breeding -- for instance the gross value of yield increase in wheat alone, attributable to plant breeders is £373-445m p.a. In addition, improved varieties offer environmental benefits such as reduced Nitrogen run-off (estimated 50% weed sward uses 17% of Nitrogen applied vs 100% for newly replanted ryegrass).In addition to allowing the benefits of improved varieties to be felt more rapidly and more fully by UK agriculture, this project also extends the UK's reputation for agricultural technology innovation, and will increase global exports, essential to the post-Brexit economy."