A team of academics from the Universities of Edinburgh, Pretoria and Johannesburg, in conjunction with the South Africa-based multinational fertilizer company, Omnia Group, Ltd, was recently awarded the Agri-Tech Catalyst grant by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency.
The consortium submitted a proposal for improved cultivation and nutrition of the African staple, maize, to the Agricultural and Food Systems Innovation competition. Novel biostimulants will be screened and applied in greenhouse and field scale, and the effects on cultivation, as well as nutritional value of the crop, will be determined. The project will rely heavily on cooperation between industry and the academic partners.
The analyses will be conducted in appropriately equipped laboratories at the University of Edinburgh (EdinOmics platform, Dr Karl Burgess) as well as at the University of Johannesburg (Plant Metabolomics, Dr Fidele Tugizimana). The research component will be heavily metabolomics-based, relying on the latest high-throughput methods developed at UoE and UJ. Hence, technology and expertise transfer between the UK and SA will be a strong project outcome. In addition, stronger academic-industry partnerships will also be forged during the implementation of the programme. The African Centre for Gene Technologies (Mr Molati Nonyane and Dr John Becker) will provide coordination and oversight and exploit opportunities for further programme growth and development utilising this investment.
The project is envisaged to kick off in November 2019.
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