Research and KT activity

More than 50% of the cereals and oilseeds annual levy income of around £10m is invested in research and knowledge transfer activities.

The Research and Knowledge Transfer (R & KT) team are central in managing a variety of projects and funding research into key areas such as agronomy, crop nutrition and natural resources. Key findings are communicated through a variety of channels from detailed research reports to events to articles featured in the press.

Within the R&KT team are experts dedicated to the Recommended Lists project. They continuously produce information to guide growers in their variety decisions. Their key publication, the HGCA Recommended Lists, is published annually.

HGCA’s ‘Investing in Innovation’ research and knowledge transfer strategy, developed in consultation with industry, sets out how it hopes to address the wider research challenges of delivering greater added value for the end user against a background of declining research funding from other sources.

The strategy identifies four priority areas for research funding up to 2014:

• Increasing yield
• Optimising inputs
• Increasing crop value
• Preparing the industry

More detail can be found in the Research and Knowledge Transfer Priority Matrix.

Calls for new proposals are issued throughout the year, based on the supply chain priorities. All proposals are to be reviewed by the Research and KT Advisory Committee.

For more information on current funding, visit the Funding and Awards section.

HGCA has a good history of working with the Research Councils, government departments, universities, commercial companies, stakeholders and other AHDB divisions to leverage additional funding and ‘in kind’ support. In the period from 2007 to 2010, the HGCA project portfolio was more than doubled with the help of additional funding.

HGCA is actively involved in raising the profile of agricultural R&D within the young science community and training the next generation of agricultural researchers. Since 2002,HGCA has supported 52 PhD projects, covering a wide range of research from disease management to human and animal nutrition. HGCA also awards a small number of undergraduate bursaries to add value to existing projects by providing funding to conduct small complementary experiments at low cost as well as enabling PhD students and recent post-docs working on HGCA projects to gain supervisory and project management experience.

For more information visit the Funding and Awards section