Farming and Green Chemistry

Farming and Green Chemistry : Farming and Green Chemistry Talk will have two components What farming can provide to new businesses focused on green chemistry Farming as a consumer of green chemistry

Slide2 : Background to an opportunity Essential to go through recent changes in farming that make areas such as this real possibilities for farmers

Slide3 : Green Chemistry: A new opportunity Wheat is not wheat is not wheat Farmers have years of expertise in growing crops that differ in their properties for different markets. Many of these characteristics are altered through management If you want crops with high or low content of particular compounds systems of production can be easily developed to make your processes easier and possibly cheaper

Slide4 : Green Chemistry: A new opportunity New body coordinating the development of new markets National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC). Website www.nnfcc.co.uk Focuses on all aspects on non-food crop uses including industrial processes.

Slide5 : Green Chemistry: New tools for farming New tools are needed that can Provide control of weeds, microbial/viral pathogens and insects. Low margins on many commodity and vegetable food crops Increasing resistance in many weed, pathogen and insect species Heavy regulatory burden to allow product use

Slide6 : Range of currently available compounds is reducing, although some new compounds have been developed Significant issues with development of resistance in certain species such as blackgrass Need for targeting to allow plant diversity in margins to increase, so low environmental mobility Green Chemistry: For weeds

Slide7 : Green Chemistry: For pathogens Wide range of strains/races with differing susceptibility Need new strategies that can target not just mechanism in pathogen

Slide8 : Green Chemistry: For insects Opportunities for novel control will vary with species that reproduce sexually and asexually Sexually reproducing species Can use pheromones E.g. Codling Moth

Slide9 : Green Chemistry: For insects More difficult with asexually reproducing species Have to disrupt host location Hard to have specific controls as species specific cues are not common and vary between species

Slide10 : Green Chemistry: For insects Insecticide Resistance is also a key issue

Slide11 : Green Chemistry: Solutions Possible approach is to encourage the plant to ‘do the work’, but how ? Many plants are resistant to most pathogens, the pathways associated with manufacture of JA are key to maintaining this resistance

Slide12 : Green Chemistry: Solutions Can this work ? Much work on impact of Jasmonic acid depleted mutants on acceptability and performance of aphids. New research looking at possible ‘inducer’ compounds and how they alter the plants acceptability

Slide13 : Conclusions Future work Can provide raw materials for industrial processes Need new research into the biochemistry of plant-pathogen interactions particularly New to develop methods of inducing plants to produce ‘defence’ responses to help control pathogens