DAERA announces £750,000 for agri-food research

Date published: 04 October 2018

The Department of Agriculture Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) has today announced that £750,000 of new funding has been awarded to three agri-food research projects.

Dr. David Simpson, Centre for Experimental Medicine QUB, Dr. Irina Tikhonova, School of Pharmacy QUB, Alistair Carson, Director of Science Evidence and Innovation Policy at DAERA and Dr. Mark Mooney, Institute for Global Food Security QUB.

This builds upon the 2016 award of £250,000 to the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.

The new funding, awarded to research teams within Queen’s University Belfast, will support collaborative projects that have been successful under the US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership Programme Agricultural Call 2017.

The three projects are as follows:

  • Improved Animal husbandry through Inhibition of Microbial Bile Salt Hydrolase – Queen’s University Belfast in partnership with University College Cork and University of Tennessee.
  • Targeted genome editing to enhance genetic resistance to Mycobacterium bovis infection in domestic cattle populations – Queen’s University Belfast in partnership with University College Cork and Acceligen/Recombinetics, Inc.
  • Development and validation of an on-farm, electronic disease diagnosis platform for cattle – Queen’s University Belfast in partnership with University College Cork and Georgia Institute of Technology.

DAERA has been working in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM) in the Republic of Ireland and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to identify opportunities to co-fund research in areas of shared strategic priority.

Collaboration and co-operation will help to expedite solutions to some of the global challenges and opportunities facing agriculture and will boost local research and expertise to meet the needs of Northern Ireland’s agri-food sector.

The new funding for local scientists, technologists and advisers will play an essential part in helping farmers to face the challenges of increasingly competitive agri-food and forestry sectors. Sharing knowledge and resources through transnational collaboration will enhance the quality of research and add value to the £1million in funding awarded by DAERA.  

DAERA is currently on target to meet its objective of identifying 11 new collaborative research projects, contracting at least 11 new postdoctoral scientists based in NI research organisations by December 2018.

Notes to editors: 

 

1. Captions:
6251: Dr. Mark Mooney, Institute for Global Food Security QUB, Dr. Irina Tikhonova, School of Pharmacy QUB and Dr. David Simpson, Centre for Experimental Medicine QUB.
6254: Dr. David Simpson, Centre for Experimental Medicine QUB, Dr. Irina Tikhonova, School of Pharmacy QUB, Alistair Carson, Director of Science Evidence and Innovation Policy at DAERA and Dr. Mark Mooney, Institute for Global Food Security QUB.

2. This is the second tranche of the US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership Programme Agricultural Call.

3. The following project was successful under the US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership Programme Agricultural Call 2016 - Application of next generation sequencing for the identification of DNA based biomarkers in regulatory regions of the genome for susceptibility to bovine respiratory disease complex - Agri-food and Bio sciences Institute (AFBI) in partnership with Teagasc and the University of Missouri USA. (£250,000 was awarded to AFBI by DAERA).

4. Total funding commitments from DAERA to the Northern Ireland element of the projects is currently £1million. DAFM has funded £1,242,960 to the Republic of Ireland element of these projects and NIFA has committed £1,163,232 to the United States element of the projects, totalling £3,406,192.  

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