The British Department for Business Innovation and Skills will award over £5m to a host of research projects designed to help tackle food security and sustainability challenges, as part of the government's £70m Agri-Tech Catalyst fund.

 

The funding awards will be shared across 13 business and university-led projects, with the government providing £4m and £1.3m of co-investment coming from industry.

 

The research projects supported through the programme were designed to help boost crop yields, protect livestock and improve the sustainability of food production.

 

Several of the projects to have secured funding are specifically focused on tackling environmental issues, including an initiative to decrease food waste through the control of fruit flies in Asia and Africa and a research project to develop an autonomous system for remotely monitoring invasive fruit pest.

 

The news comes after a fresh row broke out over EU plans to restrict the use of certain pesticides that are blamed in some quarters for declining levels of biodiversity.

 

A report commissioned by the National Farmers' Union (NFU), the Crop Protection Association (CPA) and the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) predicted that EU plans to restrict the use of 40 chemicals by 2020 could lead to significant reductions in yields of common crops such as apples, potatoes and onions.

 

The European Commission said it would consider the report as part of its upcoming impact assessment on the proposed new rules, but sources indicated that they regarded some of the projections for falling yields as an overestimate.

 

Meanwhile, green groups slammed the report as "scare-mongering" and called on EU governments to stick with regulations that are designed to limit the use of harmful chemicals.