Project Title: Accelerating Discovery by Mining and Visualising Integrated Chemogenomics Data Name: Mark Forster Orgaisation : Syngenta Project Description: This Syngenta and Rothamsted colaboration project, has a focus on extending the Ondex data integration toolkit by adding 'chemical intelligence' to the existing software toolkit. This will provide enhanced capabilities for chemical structure visualisation , and the ability to link together datasets of (for example) internal and external chemical structure repositories. External datasets will include public chemical bioactivity resources such as the ChEMBL resource hosted at EMBL-EBI. This will enhance the interpretation of internal chemical structure information, providing links to public information on genes and proteins, allowing chemists and biologists greater insight into the mechanisms of bioactivity. As the Ondex toolkit is available under an open source license, all enhancements will also be made freely available to the scientific community as open source. This is intended to drive the adoption and uptake of the new tools and capabilities and contribute to open innovation.

Across the world we face growing issues of food security and nutrition. Agri-science is one of the eight great technologies where the UK can link research strength to practical application to farming practices and the food industry. This project focuses on improving outcomes in primary production, and hence food security, by using advanced technologies to facilitate efficiency benchmarking for both productivity and environmental performance. The hypothesis we will investigate is that historic data patterns can be used to support farmers’ decision making, a positive impact on global food security in a sustainable way. High resolution data measurements will be evaluated in large scale and smallholder agriculture at locations in Zambia and the UK. Syngenta, AGCO, the University of Aberystwyth and the University of Southampton are working with other academic and international development organisations to deliver the project.

This project will enable efficacy and environmental protection to be optimised for soil-applied pesticides, supporting rational product design and regulatory approval. Simulation models are the primary basis for regulating pesticides against EU ground- and surface-water protection standards, but the current models cannot explicitly represent plants or their roots, or the effects of formulations and formulation placement strategies. This project will create a conceptual framework for representing local pesticide concentrations in the whole soil-plant system, and will use it to produce a spatially-competent simulation model. By relating local concentrations of pesticides to product efficacy, it will be possible to use the model to rationally design better active ingredients, formulations and placement strategies. The new model will also enable the environmental benefit of advanced formulations and placement strategies to be quantified in a cost-effective way for the first time. This offers the prospect of being able to gain credit in the regulatory approval process for these technologies, offsetting the negative economic effects of evolving regulation.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The Smart Emulsion Project is a collaborative project between Syngenta, the University of Birmingham and the National Physical Laboratory and is part funded by the Technology Strategy Board. Emulsions offer a convenient way to formulate hydrophobic active ingredients. However, typical emulsions are not often optimised in terms chemical and physical properties. The aim of the project is to develop new multifunctional, high value, formulated Smart Emulsion products. The technology to be investigated involves use of novel emulsifier molecules to control the properties of the oil/ water interface as well as working towards the generation of nanoemulsions. Novel techniques will be applied to the study of these emulsions, including atomic force and ion conductance microscopy. Potential benefits include improved formulation efficacy leading to greater crop yield through more efficient and targeted control of pests with lower environmental impact. Ultimately, success in this project will help growers around the world to meet the challenge of the future to grow more from less and surmount the rising demand for food, feed and fuel whilst preserving the natural resources of the planet.