The aim of the project is to improve the sustainability and efficiency of UK strawberry production by using innovative technologies to develop improved cultivars and systems for soil-less culture. Strawberries account for around 60% of total berry production. The strawberry market is worth c. £450 million based on retail sales, and UK production exceeded 108,000 tonnes in 2012. With annual growth of 10-15% p.a., production in the UK has shown the largest increase in Europe with a rise of 156% in the last ten years. New and improved cultivars and innovative technologies has enabled growers to extend the season of production to at least eight months of the year. This increase has led to a significant reduction in reliance of imported fruit; home production marketed as a percentage of total supply was 66% in 2012 compared to 53% in 2002. However with fresh strawberry imports worth c. £122.8 million, there is still scope to improve self-sufficiency of the UK industry. To do so UK growers will need to adopt new products and embrace new methods to further improve the efficiency of production and season extension. Following the withdrawal of the soil sterilant methyl bromide in 2009, the incidence of soil-borne diseases such as crown rot and Verticillium wilt has increased considerably. Chloropicrin has been adopted as a substitute product, but since this also faces an uncertain future, alternative strategies are being sought. Instead of planting directly in the soil, many growers are now utilising substrate bags to alleviate the risks posed by soil-borne pathogens. Soil-less culture has been growing steadily in recent years and currently around 40% of strawberries produced in the UK are grown using this system. In the last five years peat-based products have been replaced by coir, an arguably more sustainable alternative growing medium. In an effort to advance the sustainable intensification of strawberry production, a commercial-led breeding programme will be intrinsic to the future of the industry. Currently most breeding programmes focus on cultivars for soil production but if the adoption of soil-less systems continues to rise, there is a necessity to promote economic sustainability by developing new cultivars that are adapted to substrate production. By improving efficiency, yield and fruit quality through a new generation of innovative technologies it is envisaged that the whole UK soft fruit industry, from grower to consumer will benefit.

The UK is not self-sufficient in apples, even during the cropping season, providing only one third of our own consumption with the shortfall made up by imports. A large proportion of this is due to our inability to meet the stringent specification set by supermarkets for Class 1 fruit, which represents 80% of sales. Our consortium represents 20% of the apple crop in the UK; our records show that similar orchards can have outputs that vary by a factor of 2 or 3, with reject fruit going to waste or low value processing. A significant amount of this variation is down to management practice. Our distribution members believe that, by standardising best-practice orchard management, and with a strategic approach to breeding new cultivars, we could gear up our orchards to take back at least 100,000T of the imported volume. This project is designed to enhance the pace of improvement of quality and output parameters in UK apple orchards through improving management practices and strategic data capture. For this, we need detailed management information, which has been sorely lacking due to the labour-intensive and subjective nature of manual checks to date. The project develops a novel vision-based crop measurement technology based on the convergence between state-of-the-art cost effective image capture technology (now achievable using consumer grade cameras instead of expensive scientific instruments) and our new image processing algorithms. These tools will be used to identify and record commercially relevant phenotype traits in detail. This data can be used for yield and quality prediction and management in season, for the optimisation of commercial yields across the UK through the transfer of 'best practice' over a longer timescale, and finally to tie in with the recently completed sequencing of the apple genome, to identify the best markers to more effectively breed new elite cultivars with the best commercial (as well as biological) traits. The project objectives include the identification and optimisation of the most commercially effective traits, the development of an automated in-field system to regularly measure the status and development of these traits in response to stress and management activities, decision support outputs and the new knowledge required to start the UK strategic development programme for new types of commercial cultivar. The consortium is led by business, in the form of Worldwide Fruit, the UK's largest apple producer and supply group, joined by technology developers who will commercialise the novel platform technology, and supported by East Malling Research, world experts in pomology and apple cultivar development, who will set out the phenotype maps and disseminate the academic outputs relating to genetic markers for improved cultivars. The group has the skills to research, develop, commercialise and exploit the technology in the UK, and will exploit within Europe and/or licence to other manufacturers as volumes grow. TSB support is the catalyst needed to drive this innovation across the business-academia gap, while the exposure the scheme brings will help us to penetrate the market more quickly. Potential benefits to the UK apple growers' industry are: raising production quality (percentage within spec.) to better meet supermarket size and uniformity specifications, saving up to £40M of wasted product; increasing the UK average cropping intensity by up to 50% through 'best practice' identification and transfer, growing capacity by a further £50M; and giving the UK the capability to strategically lead the world in the rapid development of new cultivars, shortening the introduction time by potentially up to 5 years

Climate change will have serious and profound impacts on pests and diseases of agricultural crops in Europe and it is vital that new tools and management methods are developed to tackle the problems that will increasingly threaten EU food production as a result. * In this project, for the first time, comprehensive state-of-the-art genomic, metabolomic and modelling methods will be used to develop the necessary tools and management methods for tackling spider mites that are increasingly serious pests of many important crops throughout the EU. * This will not only be an outstanding contribution to spider mite management under climate change but crucially be an example, demonstrating how the best and most advanced methods can be applied to the vast array of other important pests and diseases that will develop because of climate change. * Spider mite outbreaks and crop damage are strongly favoured by high temperatures and drought stress caused by climate change (especially in combination) that will have a serious impact not only in southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin but also throughout Europe because of more extreme weather events including heat waves and droughts. The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae (TSSM), is a highly polyphagous species which attacks many crops and is adapting to attack several important new crops including grape vines and corn. Tetranychus evansi (TE) is a recently arrived alien invasive pest that is spreading through Europe and attacks important solanacious crops including tomato and potato. * Phytoseiid predatory mites are the main naturally occurring predators that help regulate spider mite populations and are introduced as biocontrol agents for control of spider mites in commercial crops. They are sensitive to broad-spectrum insecticides and the increasing use of these insecticides to control other alien invasive pests, e.g. spotted wing Drosophila and brown marmorated stink bug, are harming them and causing more serious outbreaks of spider mites. * In this project, teams from 7 EU countries and Canada will model the performance of each organism in plant-spider mite-predators tritrophic interaction under changing climatic (CC) conditions. This will be accompanied by determination of reciprocal transcriptional and metabolomics changes in plants (tomato and strawberry) and spider mites (TSSM and TE) upon their interactions under normal and CC scenarios. In addition, we will search for elicitors and effectors of TSSM and TE that are capable of modulating plant defences. Using Systems biology approaches, we will link performance of plants and mites with genome-wide changes in their responses. Thus, our study will not only model performance of organisms involve in tritrophic interaction, but will also model processes whose changes lead to modulated performance under CC. This comprehensive knowledge can then be used to develop new tools and methods for climate-smart pest control.

This project addresses the effects of climate change in the UK on blackcurrant production, where the trend towards warmer winters has adversely affected dormancy break and subsequent crop yields and quality, substantially reducing profitability. The use of existing dormancy-breaking treatments, developed for stone fruit crops, will be assessed for their efficacy in blackcurrant, their use optimised, and their mode of action evaluated at a physiological/biochemical level. From this, a new improved product for blackcurrant and 'best practice' guidelines for growers can be developed. Additionally, models predicting responses to the chilling environment for different varieties will be established, and this information will be used to direct the use of dormancy-breaking treatments to improve yield and quality. The project outcomes will directly influence future blackcurrant production in the UK, and will also be applicable to other perennial fruit crops, many of which have high chill requirements and are most productive after cold winters.