Dietary fibre (DF) is essential for human health, improving gastro-intestinal function and reducing the risk of a range of chronic diseases (including type 2 diabetes, cardio-vascular disease and types of cancer). However, most UK consumers do not eat DF, with the average daily intake being 17.2 g for women and 20.1g for men, compared with a target of 30g. Cereal products are the major source of DF in the UK diet, with bread alone contributing about 20%. However, the contribution from wheat is limited by the fact that most wheat products are made from white flour, which contains about 3.5% DF compared with 11.5-15.5% in wholemeal. We have therefore identified wheat lines with high DF in white flour, which can be used to develop high fibre wheat lines for UK farmers and products for UK consumers. The proposal will remove the constraints to the development of high fibre lines and products in the UK, by collaborating with four wheat breeders, 2 milling and baking companies and the organisations representing the milling (NABIM) and baking (Federation of Bakers) sectors. This will be achieved in two ways: by providing high fibre pre-breeding lines and molecular makers to wheat breeders, and high fibre lines to millers and bakers to optimise their processes. These advances will be disseminated by the BBSRC Designing Future Wheat programmes and by NABIM and FoB. It will therefore have a fundamental impact on the diet and health of UK consumers.

Concern about the development of resistance to antibiotics has reached the public consciousness with predictions that we are heading for a dark age where our ability to fight infection is severely compromised. Although the indiscriminate medical prescribing of antibiotics is part of the problem, their extensive use in agriculture has very much been in the spotlight. The use of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent infections in farmed animals is widespread in much of the world. Although this practice is banned in Europe, antibiotics are still widely used to treat diseases, especially of the gastrointestinal tract, and total use in animals has risen as the scale of production has increased. The need for responsible use of antibiotics and stewardship of this precious resource is likely to lead to significant restrictions on agricultural use. This presents tough challenges for the poultry industry, where maintaining good gut health is critical to the efficient production of poultry meat. Poultry supply around one third of the world's animal protein and although 60 billion birds are reared worldwide each year, demand is fast accelerating as our population grows. A need therefore exists for alternatives to antibiotics to improve gut health and energy retention to sustain the efficiency of animal production, not least as we compete with animals for dietary resources such as grain. We have characterised a novel family of antimicrobial peptides from eggs which possess potent activity against a number of bacteria. These small peptides, which we called ovodefensins, have been synthesised inexpensively on a large scale by our industrial collaborators. When tested in animals and artificial gut models they have potent favourable effects on bacterial communities in the gut. For example, in a critical region of the lower gut there is an increase in favourable organisms such as Lactobacilli and less undigested food is present, which indicates that the gut is working well. Indeed growth of the chickens was improved by 6% over just 3 weeks by in-feed administration of an ovodefensin, which is comparable to the effect of growth-promoting antibiotics. We propose to understand how the ovodefensin peptides exert their effect by examining the gut tissue and contents from chickens that have been fed the peptides. We will look for changes in gut structure and gene expression, as well as differences in the metabolites and microbes in the gut contents that may be associated with the beneficial effects of ovodefensins on gut health and growth. We also want to understand how treatment in the early days of a chick's life influences the colonisation of the gut by bacteria and how this influences maturation and function of the gut in later life. In terms of the ovodefensin peptides themselves we have found a wide range of these molecules across the egg-laying birds and reptiles. Evolution, driven presumably by the bacteria the eggs are exposed to, has resulted in diverse ovodefensins with different amino acids sequences but also in number of amino acids between key amino acids that determine the shape of the molecule. We want to understand how the key features of the molecules dictate the ability to kill bacteria and promote growth to inform the design of ovodefensins with improved activity. We will take a structured approach using gallin, a potent ovodefensin, to alter key amino acids that effect the properties of the molecule that are thought to be important for its activity against bacteria. Ultimately we aim to use the knowledge gained to design optimised ovodefensins which will have improved activity against bacteria and show even more potent activity to improve gut health in chickens and reduce the need to use antibiotics. The project is founded on research funded by BBSRC and AB Vista and benefits from substantial contributions from our industrial partners, reflecting the value to industry of the proposed research.

We feed large amounts of cereal grains and beans to animals. The efficiency with which animals convert feed to body weight is the most important measure of the productivity of intensive animal agriculture. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) is the amount of feed (kg) required to increase body mass by 1kg. Of the animals, fish, poultry, pigs and cattle that are farmed intensively in the UK, fish are the most efficient converters of feed into body mass, with a FCR of 1. Poultry, depending on the species and feeding period, have a FCR of < 2, while pigs and cattle are much less efficient. One way in which farmers can improve FCR is by the addition of enzymes to animal feed. Our partner in this project, AB Vista Feed Ingredients, a division of AB Agri, a part of Associated British Foods, ABF, is involved in the development and distribution of feed enzymes including phytases. Phytases are essential for efficient use by the animal of a phosphate-rich molecule that is the major storage form of phosphorus in feed components of plant origin like grains and soy beans. The phosphate rich molecule, phytate, or inositol hexakisphosphate, contains six phosphates for every inositol. Inositol has some similarity to sugars, but, unlike sugars, we know little of its digestive use to the animal. In contrast, phosphate is known to be hugely important to mineral nutrition, bone development and growth of animals. Companies in ABF including AB Vista Feed Ingredients have substantial programs of research for improvement of phytases in respect of their application and their intrinsic properties. There are several drivers of this research: improvements in animal growth afforded by access to phytate-bound phosphate in the dietary feedstuff and avoidance of anti-nutrient effects of dietary phytate. The use of enzymes to access phosphate in feeds means that less of this essential nutrient needs to be added as rock phosphate (commonly dicalcium phosphate). It has been estimated that the addition of less than $1 worth of enzyme spares rock phosphate costs of $4-6/tonne of feed. Many companies undertake poultry feeding trials to show that their enzymes work. A common approach is to feed animals with different amounts of phytase in a randomized trial design and to measure animal performance. While many trials highlight the value of phytase addition to animal feed, few companies measure phytate degradation by analysing gut contents (digesta) for phytate and its inositol phosphate degradation products. AB Vista Feed Ingredients does because the approach explains how their products work, enabling development of better products. New research suggests that inositol released from feed during digestion is beneficial to animal growth. The mechanisms by which inositol improves animal growth is unclear. While we may reasonably assume that inositol generated during digestion enters the blood and is transported to tissues very few scientific studies have been made of the subject. The applicants, Charles Brearley, Gabriel Mutungi and AB Vista Feed Ingredients have over 20y experience, respectively, of inositol phosphate and inositol analysis, of muscle physiology including of farmed poultry, and of the use of feed enzymes in animal nutrition. Our programme of research is designed to reveal how inositol, released by phytases, improves nutrition in poultry. We will exploit newly developed methods that allow measurement of inositol in feed, digesta and plasma and adapt these methods to analyse inositol in muscle tissue. Additionally by analysis of the physiology of muscle, we expect to explain how inositol improves muscle growth, identify the key benefits of phytases and so improve the phytase dosing regimens of farmed poultry with consequence for the environment and the consumer.

Oil is the most important source of energy worldwide, accounting for 35% of primary energy consumption and the majority of chemical feedstocks. The quest for sustainable resources to meet demands of a constantly rising global population is one of the main challenges for mankind this century. To be truly viable such alternative feedstocks must be sustainable, that is "have the ability to meet 21st century energy needs without compromising those of future generations." Development of efficient routes to large-scale chemical intermediates and commodity chemicals from renewable feedstocks is essential to have a major impact on the economic and environmental sustainability of the chemical industry. While fine chemical and pharmaceutical processes have a diverse chemistry and a need to find green alternatives, the large scale production of petrochemical derived intermediates is surely a priority issue if improved overall sustainability in chemicals manufacture is to be achieved. For example, nylon accounts for 8.9% of all manmade fibre production globally and is currently sourced exclusively from petrochemicals. It is one of the largest scale chemical processes employed by the chemicals sector. Achieving a sustainable chemicals industry in the near future requires 'drop in' chemicals for direct replacement of crude oil feedstocks. The production of next-generation advanced materials from the sustainably-sourced intermediates is a second key challenge to be tackled if our reliance on petrochemicals is to end The project will develop new heterogeneously catalysed processes to convert cellulose derivatives to high value platform and commodity chemicals. We specifically target sustainable production of intermediates for manufacture of polyamides and acrylates, thereby displacing petroleum feedstocks. Achieving the aims of the project requires novel multifunctional catalyst technology which optimises the acid-base properties, hydrogen transfer and deoxygenation capability. Using insights into catalyst design gleaned from our previous work, a directed high-throughput (HT) catalyst synthesis and discovery programme will seek multifunctional catalyst formulations for key biomass transformations. Target formulations will be scaled up and dispersed onto porous architectures for study in lab-scale industrial-style reactors. We will also seek to exploit multi-phase processes to improve selectivity and yield. This will be combined with multi-scale systems analysis to help prioritise promising pathways, work closely with industry to benchmark novel processes against established ones, develop performance measures (e.g. life cycle analysis (LCA)) to set targets for catalytic processes and explore optimal integration strategies with existing industrial value chains. Trade-offs between optimising single product selectivity versus allowing multiple reaction schemes and using effective separation technology in a "multiproduct" process will be explored. The potential utilization of by-products as fuels, sources of hydrogen, or as chemical feeds, will be evaluated by utilizing data from parallel programmes.

Mycotoxins are fungal metabolites that can be present on grain, cereals, grass and conserved forage. Several risk factors increase the likelihood of mycotoxins and mycotoxicosis (disease in animals caused by mycotoxin ingestion), including high rainfall at crop flowering and during pre-harvest, hence wet summers such as 2012 result in high mycotoxin levels in grain. Although there is compulsory testing and legislative limits to concentrations of mycotoxins in grain destined for human consumption, there are no legal requirements for livestock feeds. The EU guidelines suggest maximum limits for Fusarium mycotoxins - Deoxynivalenol, and Zearalenone - for grains and complete feeds. These guidelines have been produced as a result of the major research area in mycotoxins concentrating on grain based mycotoxins (mainly Fusarium) using monogastric animal models e.g. pigs and poultry. However, this does not cover the broad spectrum of mycotoxins nor is it applicable to ruminants. Recent research has reported higher concentrations of mycotoxins can occur in straw than the associated grain samples. Silage (whole crop (grain and straw), maize and grass) the main forage source for dairy and beef cattle represents a significant source of mycotoxins, for which there is comparatively little research. This project will address this gap in scientific knowledge by investigating a broader spectrum of mycotoxins from the main fungal genera with a ruminant model system. Due to the resilient microorganism diversity in the rumen, ruminants can withstand the effects of mycotoxins better than monogastrics, but this capacity may be compromised during times of stress (e.g. diet change or disease). In particular high production dairy cows are offered diets (cereals and grains rich in starch) which result in a change in the standard rumen microflora populated by fibrolytic (fibre degrading) bacteria in favour of more starch degrading organism which ultimately reduces the pH of the rumen. At this point the ability of the rumen to detoxify mycotoxins is substantially reduced. Guideline tolerance levels for different species have been proposed, but it is unknown how reliable these guidelines are. A recent veterinary survey in the UK showed a high incidence (10 - 80%) of mycotoxicosis in dairy and beef herds associated with sub-standard aerobically spoiled maize and grass silage when fed with cereal based rations. The severity of mycotoxicosis depends on the mycotoxin type, animal health, stage of production and dose eaten. Some types damage organs directly (e.g. liver, kidney and rumen), whilst others impair reproduction or cause cancer. Physical effects range from performance loss to mortality. Different mycotoxins can interact in the rumen to exacerbate the effect and some are known to suppress immune function. Signs of mycotoxicosis in ruminant animals include loss of appetite, reduced milk yield or poor weight gain. Early veterinary diagnosis of mycotoxicosis is difficult due to a lack of specific symptoms and overlapping symptoms of other metabolic diseases such as acidosis in cattle. The problem does not end in animal disease or production losses as mycotoxins in the feed of dairy animals can lead to their metabolites appearing in dairy products, which pose a risk in human health, particularly for infants. A rapid early detection method of mycotoxicosis for ruminants is therefore required. This project will produce a metabolite profile from urine, saliva and plasma of animals suffering mycotoxicosis to be used as biomarkers of the disease. This information in future more applied projects could be developed into a rapid diagnosis tool for veterinarians. As an industrial partner award project key industry members associated with animal feed, biochemistry and pharmaceutical products have already signed up to develop the basic science from this project into industrial development for maximum impact of the research.