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A new network, led by the University of Southampton in the UK, aims to identify opportunities and barriers to growing more climate-resilient crops for the nation’s food supply.

The project, named Novel and Underutilised Crop Network (NUCNet), will bring together researchers from around the UK in a coordinated effort to accelerate research into the local growth of lentils, chickpeas, sunflowers and other crops.

It includes researchers from the Universities of Southampton, Dundee, Reading, and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. The project has secured £645k of funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of the government’s UK Research and Innovation body.

Researchers will work with farmers, retailers and community groups to see how we can utilise crops that are rarely grown in the UK today, but could be crucial to the nation’s future food security.

Currently, UK farming is heavily reliant on a small number of crops including wheat, barley and oilseed rape. Extreme weather and new pests brought about by climate change could damage harvests, threatening the UK’s food security.

As billions of pounds have already been lost due to floods and droughts, the network explained that diversifying what the UK grows and adding crops that are more resistant to extreme weather can make British farming more resilient.

The new network aims to bring together experts around the country already working on this, stimulate new research activity and influence policy. It will engage with key stakeholders across the value chain, and is particularly interested in engaging with young people, who it describes as ‘the generation at the forefront of climate change who will experience this transition first-hand’.

Mark Chapman, professor at the University of Southampton and the project’s lead, said: “There are a lot of unknowns about how this transition might take place, from the practical challenges facing farms to whether it is economically viable”.

“The new network will coordinate research efforts to provide evidence for system level change to the UK food system. Crucially, this means engaging directly with producers, supermarkets and communities to understand their perspectives.”