We live in the critical decade for climate change. The world increasingly experiences the damages and losses from extreme weather events caused by human-made climate change. Crop losses, devastating floods, catastrophic wildfires and rising sea levels cannot be ignored. If we do not achieve a balance between our greenhouse gas emissions and removals from the air, these impacts will become considerably worse and more dangerous. The UK has legally committed to achieving a net zero greenhouse gas balance by 2050. However, it is currently hotly debated how this goal can be achieved. The Land Use for Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub brings together researchers, policy-makers, industry leaders, innovators and rural community representatives from all four nations of the UK. Our 33 member organisations include researchers and practitioners from green finance, agricultural advisory organisations, NGOs, and an arts collective. The goal of the LUNZ hub is to accelerate positive land use change that reduces harmful greenhouse gas emissions, increases food security and restores a healthy environment for plants, animals and people. The Hub will equip UK policy-makers, industry and stakeholders with the advice they need, in the format and timeframe they require, to take policy decisions to help avert dangerous climate change and lead to a better future. We will bring together scientific evidence and stakeholder perspectives to define shared, net zero scenarios (plausible alternative futures)and credible pathways (steps including policies and incentives) to achieve them by 2050. The Hub will establish an Agile Policy Centre, a Net Zero Futures Platform, and a Creative Methods Lab. Within the Hub, our four National Teams will work together with our Topic Expert Groups to build capacity for a Just Transition to net zero that benefits people and planet alike. The Hub will support the UK Government and the devolved administrations in achieving multiple environmental goals by understanding the impacts of policy decisions on all relevant aspects, including renewable energy, agriculture, planning frameworks, afforestation, water management, nature conservation, biodiversity, and rural economies. The Hub will work on several priority policy areas: 1. Land use change that benefits the environment and is socially just, leading to ecosystem co-benefits such as biodiversity, soil health, human health and wellbeing, and green growth at national, regional and local levels; 2. Future agricultural, environmental and food policies that deliver a net zero future, building on the Agriculture Act 2020, Environment Act 2021, Agriculture Bill 2022 (Wales) and 2023 (Scotland), including future sources of finance, payment schemes and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase removals while strengthening food security, biodiversity and land-based businesses (e.g. farms, crofts, forestry); 3. Integrating policy with carbon and natural capital markets, to ensure that the drivers and mechanisms for on-the-ground transformation work together for optimal outcomes. Achieving net zero by 2050 will require new technologies and practices which lower greenhouse gas emissions. These will include soil improvement practices, peatland protection and restoration, removal of greenhouse gases from the air and decarbonising our economy, large-scale tree-planting to take up carbon from the air, creation and restoration of habitats, transitioning to a circular economy, and significantly reduce food waste and consumption of higher emitting foodstuffs. To cover these diverse areas the Hub is comprised of the primary players in the UKRI AgriFood for Net Zero Network+, Landscape Decisions Programme, and principal investigators from Greenhouse Gas Removals, Changing the Environment, Digital Environment, AI for Net Zero, and Treescapes Programmes. This team have the experience and expertise to bring together a single voice of authority for Net Zero transformation in the UK.

Lamb production is an important part of UK agriculture, contributing >10% of total livestock output. It is also important for maintaining employment and infrastructure in rural communities and helping manage and enhance landscape and biodiversity. However, for the UK sheep industry to continue as a major producer and exporter of lamb it is essential to improve carcass quality, since currently only ca. 55% of UK lambs meet core target specifications. Improving carcass quality by increasing lean meat yield (LMY) without a corresponding increase in fatness has been the focus of breeding programmes since the mid 1980's. This has been achieved utilising new technologies such as ultrasound and more recently CT scanning. While such breeding results in cumulative and permanent gains, the penetration to date has been modest, not least because of the belief that current payment systems do not reward producers for increased LMY. This project will help to change this situation. Firstly, there is one highly promising technology (video image scanning and analysis; VISA) currently being evaluated as the basis for a future value-based marketing system in the UK. Secondly, funding bodies, in the UK and elsewhere, in recent years have invested heavily in research to identify genes or chromosomal segments (QTL) responsible for a significant part of the genetic variation for important production traits. The challenge now is to successfully integrate these QTLs into breeding programmes. An earlier LINK project has identified a number of QTLs affecting muscle growth, the one on chromosome 18 in Texels (TM-QTL) being the most promising. Development of the best strategies for introducing and managing this QTL requires reliable information on the magnitude of its effects on LMY as well as possible indirect effects on other important traits. This comprehensive evaluation of new QTLs is important as genes have direct AND indirect effects, e.g. the callipyge mutation having negative effects on meat quality. There are suggestions that some of these mutations may also have negative impacts on fertility and animal welfare. It is therefore essential to understand both the direct and indirect effects of TM-QTL before exploitation. Recent business developments will soon make it possible for UK farmers to exploit other QTLs (e.g. LoinMaxTM and MyoMaxTM have recently been identified and validated in NZ, and are known to enhance muscle growth and decrease fatness in some NZ breeds. In recognition of the stratified crossbreeding structure inherent in the UK sheep industry in which terminal sire rams are mated to Mule ewes within the lowland sector to supply around 70% of slaughter lambs, we will here test the effects of these QTLs in crossbred lambs under UK conditions. This project will link together the comprehensive evaluation of the TM-QTL and other QTLs with the development and evaluation of a VISA system. It is essential that any improvements in LMY arising from exploitation of the QTLs can be differentiated by the VISA system that is likely to become the industry standard. The project will produce a range of carcasses that will be subjected to detailed evaluation through both CT scanning and dissection; providing ideal data sets for investigating relationships between CT and VISA traits and to provide the first estimates of genetic parameters for VISA traits so that these can be built into selection programmes. The project will also investigate the mode of inheritance of the TM-QTL, as well as it's interactions with other genes in the different genetic background of different breeds. For example, are the magnitude of the QTL effects measured in crossbred lambs out of Mule ewes the same as those in purebred Texels? This project will provide the essential information, which is required to avoid potentially inappropriate developments and recommendations, as well as to provide the industry with appropriate new technologies that have been fully evaluated.