Food and Drink Innovation

Does producing higher-quality food lead to a price premium in the market? We analysed the impact that a Protected Geographical (PGI) label had on the price and sales of Orkney cheddar, which gained its PGI status in 2013. A PGI label identifies a product as originating in a specific place, region or country, and has a known quality, reputation of other characteristic attributable to that specific location. Using data from 2006–2023, we examined sales and pricing to measure policy impact.

Interviews with key informants in the higher value cheese sector in Scotland revealed that although there was a market for their products, there were multiple barriers to operating their businesses.

Potato is the second most important food crop in the UK, and the underpinning seed potato industry contributes >£1 billion to Scotland’s economy. Aphid-vectored viruses threaten potato harvests because infected crops are downgraded or destroyed. Historically, Scotland has maintained low virus levels in potato crops, but this is changing due to the warming climate, new virus variants, loss of crop protection products, and aphid resistance to insecticides.

Fluctuating environmental conditions severely impact Scottish crop production affecting crop yields, nutritional quality and food security. Growth in indoor environments such as vertical farms (VF) offers opportunities to extend food security by providing year-round production in precise, pest-free, optimised environments for year-round production of high-quality crops irrespective of external conditions.

Food fraud costs the UK around £2 billion per year, and improving testing methods is key to tackling this issue. However, current techniques often lack the speed and accuracy needed to detect mislabelled meat products. Researchers at the Rowett Institute have developed a cutting-edge method called MEATiCode, which can simultaneously identify multiple meat species in a single processed food sample.