Agricultural and Forestry Science

Food quality will fall, food costs will rise and stored food will be damaged. Historical relics may be lost to insect attack, rodent and insect infestations on public transport will swell, and fungal contamination of stored food will increase. According to a recent meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) Pest Management Group, these may be the consequences of a worldwide phasing out of the crop protectant methyl bromide (MB).

The SCI Pest Management Group invited acclaimed speaker

These days our supermarket shelves are filled with more and more so-called “functional foods” foods with special health-promoting properties. These products often represent a “high-tech” product line, in the twilight zone between food and medicine. Agricultural researcher Cecilia Mark-Herbert from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU, has now studied the market for these products. Her doctoral dissertation shows that developing these foods requires not only new products, but also new

Common or garden straw could be a rich source of raw materials for a range of industries, from the health foods and cosmetics sectors to packaging and fabrics.
Researchers at the University of Wales, Bangor are developing environmentally friendly ways of processing wheat and other cereal straws to extract valuable products for industry.

The work is being carried out through the Government’s LINK scheme, with funding from the Swindon based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Coun

Researchers at Plant Research International in the Netherlands have achieved a breakthrough in the development of chrysanthemums with resistance to thrips, bringing the ecological cultivation of chrysanthemums a step closer. This is the conclusion of the thesis with which Seetharam Annadana, a Plant Research International guest member of staff from India, recently obtained his doctorate at Wageningen University. Annadana developed new techniques which make possible the genetic modification of two th