York to join global centre to enhance crop resilience

Dr Benjamin Lichman and Professor Ian Graham, researchers in the University’s Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, are part of the UK consortium led by Dr Nicola Patron at the University of Cambridge. They will collaborate with colleagues from the US, Canada, Japan and Korea to address urgent agricultural problems and explore sustainable solutions for agriculture.

“The focus of this new Centre is on increasing crop resilience,” said Dr Lichman. “We will discover and harness natural products from plants and microbes that will ultimately help farmers to achieve a consistent and reliable output from their crops. By working with industry and agricultural stakeholders we’ll ensure that these solutions are practical and scalable.”

Regional strength

“This new collaboration reinforces the strengths of the University of York in the bioeconomy and will support international activity in this area,” added Professor Graham. “The University leads BioYorkshire, a bioeconomy partnership for York and North Yorkshire, and the bioeconomy is a key component of the regional economic growth strategy.

“As an international collaboration, the Centre will foster multidisciplinary knowledge exchange and skills development and will strengthen global scientific capabilities.”

Global impact

The Centre is one of six global research centres funded by $82 million from the United States National Science Foundation and partner agencies in the US, Canada, Finland, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the UK. Each Centre will advance bioeconomy research to solve global challenges. UK activities are funded by UK Research and Innovation. 

Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, UKRI CEO, commented: “Alongside replacing fossil fuels, there is an urgent need to replace petrochemical industrial feedstocks across a wide range of sectors. This is a global challenge that requires global solutions and UKRI is delighted to be partnering in the NSF Global Centres 2024 programme to meet this need”.