NemaRecognition will be a machine learning based automatic image recognition technique capable of real-time detection of PPNs using digital images/videos. Plant clinics carry out a suite of services for growers and their advisers. A key service is the assessment of soil samples for PPN. PPN screening is carried out through time-intensive taxonomic identification, this is reliant on taxonomic expertise and several years of training. Trained nematologists are in short supply, causing concern in the industry as accurate and reliable identification of PPN is a critical factor influencing agronomic decisions. PPN affect various crops and can devastate yields, with losses up to 35% (AHDB, 2017). Growers screen fields prior to planting to identify and quantify PPN to help decide on the crop to be planted/avoided, guide variety choice, and advise control strategies. PPN screening can cost £70 per field per season and represents a substantial cost. More rapid, cost-effective assessment methods would represent a cost saving to growers. Alternatives, such as molecular-based tests, have been developed but have substantial shortcomings in accuracy, breadth of use, and grower-confidence. AI algorithms have been developed for nematode identification; however, the majority only identify one PPN genera (Bogale et al., 2020; Akintayo et al., 2018). NemaRecognition would represent an innovative state-of-the-art solution for PPN assessment by providing recognition for multiple PPN genera, and through further development would become one of the first machine learning-based techniques providing plant health services to UK growers. Image-recognition techniques have been developed for other agricultural pests (e.g., insects). However, significant challenges to producing a transformative PPN recognition system using machine learning techniques remain, including recognition of a range of PPN genera, detection in field samples, recognition through video-capture, validation, benchmarking, and selection of appropriate models. NemaRecognition would have myriad benefits, including reduced grower costs (passed down through plant clinic cost savings), increased accessibility to PPN screening in regions where services are inhibited by a taxonomic skills shortage, and as a training tool to help address the taxonomic skills shortage within the industry. Global challenges have been influential in creating this opportunity: UK net-zero farming, EU Sustainable Use Directive, UK path to sustainable farming. The NemaRecognition project will showcase the feasibility and applicability of this technology toward PPN detection and would also represent proof-of-concept for developing similar innovations for other soil-dwelling organisms, with significant potential in the growing area of soil health services.

All living organisms that make up life on Earth are made from a profusion of elements in the periodic table, including trace metals. However, in addition to oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H), the constituents of water, the three most important are Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P). These have become known as the Macro-Nutrients. These macronutrients are in constant circulation between living organisms (microbes, plants, animals, us) and the environment (atmosphere, land, rivers, oceans). Until human intervention (circa post industrial revolution and even more so since WWII) these 'cycles' were largely in balance: plants took up CO2 and produced O2 and, in order to do so, took up limited amounts of N and P from the environment (soils, rivers) and, on death, this "sequestered" C,N,P was returned back to the Earth. The problem is that human or anthropogenic activity has put these key macro-nutrient cycles out of balance. For example, vast quantities of once fossilised carbon, taken out of the atmosphere before the age of the dinosaurs, are being burnt in our power stations and this has increased atmospheric CO2 by about 30 % in recent times. More alarmingly, perhaps, is that man's industrial efforts have more than doubled the amount of N available to fertilize plants, and vast amounts of P are also released through fertilizer applications and via sewage. As the population continues to grow, and the developing world catches up, and most likely overtakes, the western world, these imbalances in the macro-nutrient cycles are set to be exacerbated. Indeed, such is the impact of man's activity on Earth that some are calling this the 'Anthropocene': Geology's new age. The environmental and social problems associated with these imbalances are diverse and complex; most people would be familiar with the ideas behind global warming and CO2 but fewer may appreciate the links to methane and nitrous oxide or the potential health impacts of excess nitrate in our drinking water. These imbalances are not being ignored and indeed a great deal of science, policy and management has been expended to mitigate the impacts of these imbalances. However, despite our progress in the science underpinning this understanding over the last 30-40 years or so, too much of this science has been focused on the individual macro-nutrients e.g. N, and in isolated parts of the landscape e.g. rivers. To compound this even further, such knowledge and understanding has often been garnered using disparate, or sometimes even antiquated, techniques. Anthropogenic activity has spread this macro-nutrient pollution all over the landscape. Some of it is taken up by life, some is stored, but a good deal of it works its way through the landscape towards our already threatened seas. We need to understand what happens to the macronutrients as they move, or flux, through different parts of the landscape and such understanding can only come about by a truly integrated science programme which examines the fate of the macronutrients simultaneously in different parts of the landscape. Here we will for the first time make parallel measurements, using truly state-of-the-art technologies, of the cycling and flux of all three macronutrients on the land and in the rivers that that land drains and, most importantly, the movement of water that transports the macro-nutrients from the land to the rivers e.g. the hydrology. Moreover, we will compare these parallel measurements across land to river in different types of landscapes: clay, sandstone and chalk, subjected to different agricultural usage in order to understand how the cycling on the land is connected, via the movement of water, to that in the rivers.

The agri-food system, producing 23% of UK emissions, must play a key role in the UK's transition to net zero by 2050, and through leadership in innovation can support change globally. Our Network+ will build on existing and new partnerships across research and stakeholder communities to develop a shared agenda, robust research plans, and scope out future research and innovation. The Network will design and deliver high-reward feasibility projects to help catalyse rapid system transformation to ensure the agri-food system is sustainable and supports the UK's net zero goal, while enhancing biodiversity, maintaining ecosystem services, fostering livelihoods and supporting healthy consumption, and minimising the offshoring of environmental impacts overseas through trade. The radical scale of the net zero challenge requires an equally bold and ambitious approach to research and innovation, not least because of the agri-food and land system's unique potential as a carbon sink. Our title, Plausible Pathways, Practical and Open Science, recognises the agri-food system as a contested area in which a range of pathways are plausible. Success requires that new relationships between natural and social science, stakeholders including industry, government and citizens, be forged in which distributed expertise is actively harnessed to support sectoral transformation. We will use our breadth of expertise from basic research to application, policy and engagement to co-produce a trusted, well-evidenced, and practical set of routes, robust to changing future market, policy and social drivers, to evolve the agri-food system towards net zero and sustainability. Marshalling our many existing stakeholder links, we will review and evaluate current options and use Network funding to catalyse new partnerships through retreats, crucibles, workshops, online digital networking and scoping studies to develop system approaches to transformation, reframe the research agenda and undertake novel research projects. We will co-design productive and creative spaces that enable the research community to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and thought leaders through the following framework: 7 Co-Is who govern the Network but are not themselves eligible for funding; 9 Year-1 Champions (with new appointments after Year 1) dynamically forging new connections across research communities; 11 Advisory Board members tasked with challenging business-as-usual thinking; and regular liaison with other stakeholders.

Global agricultural production is required to double by 2050 to meet the demands of an increasing population and the challenges of a changing climate. Changing climatic conditions, including increasing temperatures, more variable precipitation, and drought are likely to put pressure on maintaining both high crop yields and a steady supply of food. On the other hand, assuming other factors are not limiting, rising atmospheric CO2 levels may lead to increased crop productivity, as the increased availability of carbon dioxide can promote enhanced rates of plant photosynthesis. The varying abilities of different crops or cultivars to adapt to water, temperature or nutrient pressures signifies the inherent resilience of a given agricultural system, and the likelihood and the degree to which they will be impacted by climate change. Understanding how current and future plant growth conditions affect crop yield is a major priority for ensuring food security, for adapting crop selection and management strategies and for guiding crop breeding programmes. The key challenge here is linking plant behaviour that can be measured at the leaf-level in the laboratory, to plant behaviour at the national or global scale, and predicting future behaviour under forecasted climate conditions. As environmental drivers operate and interact at multiple temporal and spatial scales, addressing this challenge will require transforming how we understand, monitor and predict plant responses to stress. Observations from satellites have revolutionised spatial ecology in recent years; making it possible to monitor ecological trends over large spatial scales, and to scale from the plant to the globe. Increasingly sophisticated instruments and techniques allow scientists to examine changing vegetation trends in response to climate change from satellites at unprecedented levels of accuracy. These advances have been made possible by sensor developments, an increasing archive of legacy satellite data, and new and emerging techniques such as solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, which has been shown to be closely related to plant productivity. Whilst still in its infancy, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence has shown potential to remotely monitor crop growth, using drones through to satellites. However, these remote sensing techniques must first be underpinned by a process-based understanding of the connections between the remote sensing signal and plant characteristics. In this research, controlled laboratory experiments will be used to understand how plant stress manifests in changes to the leaf biochemical and structural properties, and in turn, how optical reflectance signatures, can be used to measure these changes. These optical markers will then be used to 'scale up' our observations, first using drone technology at the field scale, and then and at national and global scales using satellite data. This remote sensing data on crop health will be used within sophisticated biosphere models to predict plant performance under current conditions and forecasted future conditions. These approaches in combination will provide a technological basis for a complete picture at different scales, to fully exploit the resources available for crop improvement. The overarching goal of the research is to assess the ability of nationally and globally important agricultural crops to maintain their growth and performance under different environmental stresses. This research will deploy a cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary approach using controlled growth chambers, novel remote sensing techniques and plant science methods to scale from the leaf to the globe, and provide a step-change understanding in the future pressures that crops may face in light of a changing climate and their underlying resilience.

Most major changes in UK wheats, such as the introduction of dwarfing genes (which reduced plant height, but increased the yield) have been introduced from wide crosses. Wide crosses can still be used to introduce new genes which allow further major changes to be made in UK wheats. The proposal presented here will introduce new genes conferring longer ear rachis (= axis of the ear) associated with improved ear fertility from Mexican wheats (from CIMMYT) which could facilitate a quantum leap in overall yield in UK wheats. The material to test this has already been produced. Specifically, we have created a population of lines from a cross between the Mexican 'big-ear' line and a productive (highly efficient at turning sunlight into sugar) UK adapted wheat, Rialto. In a preliminary study, we have shown rachis length to be positively correlated with ear fertility (and grain number per unit land area). This proposal asks for funds to look at why the Mexican wheat produces more grain for each ear than UK wheat and whether we can use the same genes to improve UK wheat yields. The programme works with UK plant breeders from CPB-Twyford Ltd to produce wheat pre-breeding lines containing these new genes from the Mexican material. For breeders to introduce novel traits into elite UK varieties, they must first know which genes are responsible for controlling the traits and how they work to cause differences between varieties. So, we will map the genes controlling ear fertility and in doing so develop genetic markers to facilitate their selection in breeding programmes. The weather and environmental conditions can vary considerably between different countries and genes that may be useful in some countries may not be in others. We plan to carry out physiological experiments which would identify why the Mexican wheat has more grains in each ear and how this might help improve wheat yield in the UK varieties. We will also carry out experiments to examine whether these genes influence other important determinants of yield at the crop level, such as ear number and grain weight. Crucially, there should be added benefits due to the high photosynthetic ability of Rialto combined with more fertile ears in the 'big-ear' line. We already have seed from the crosses which are needed to do this work, but need funding to understand how wheat controls the number of grains produced per ear. Our industrial partner will use their breeding expertise to make new lines suited to UK breeding, and we will help develop these lines and also use these lines to help us understand the genetics of how many grains are produced per ear. Using this combined approach we will then identify a pool of candidate genes which may directly influence this trait.