Explore our research projects

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Soil and its ecosystem function

To combine physical, chemical and biological approaches to characterise soil functions delivering essential ecosystem services. This will be done in the context of identifying the potential to promote beneficial functions of soils (e.g. water-holding capacity, resistance to erosion, storage of carbon, nutrient cycling) and to mitigate impacts on the environment (e.g. nutrient leaching and greenhouse gas emissions). The applied context that this research is directed toward is to identify management options (e.g.

  • Soils
  • 2016-2022
Soil management

To support the sustainable use and management of Scotland’s soil resource. We will provide new and improved tools to predict how soil functions respond to land use, management and environmental pressures.

  • Soils
  • 2016-2022
Soil resilience

To understand resilience of soils in Scottish semi-natural ecosystems.  This research aims to understand the relationships among disturbance factors, soil properties, processes and soil functions for a range of important Scottish semi-natural ecosystems (peatland, moorland, woodland, grassland, alpine systems). This will enable assessments of the resilience of soil functions to changes in climate, environmental, and socio-economic factors.

  • Soils
  • 2016-2022
Sustainability of Healthy Diets

Sustainability of Healthy Diets: There is no single healthy, sustainable diet, since there are many different ways of achieving the dual dietary goals for health and environmental sustainability, and dietary intakes and the types of food chosen differ across different populations. This adds to the complexity of assessing and translating dietary advice to consumers. The research in this RD will provide a more comprehensive understanding of healthy sustainable diets in different sectors of the population and how these can be measured.

  • Diet & Food Safety
  • Human Nutrition
  • 2016-2022
Sustainable soil and water management

The Sustainable Soil and Water Management Deliverable has three broad aims. First, we will generate new knowledge to help enhance the sustainable use and management of soils and water in agricultural systems whilst reducing environmental impact. Work will be informed by the application of existing and novel models, soil management interventions, plant genotypes and soil quality indicators.

  • Soils
  • Water
  • 2016-2022
Trade-offs between productivity and sustainability

The key aims and drivers of this research are:

  • Improving Agricultural Practice
  • 2016-2022
Using and sharing data across supply chains

This RD will involve the development of tools and strategies to promote the increased use of data from across agricultural supply chains and industry networks, for management and feedback, in order to improve efficiency across the agri-food industry. We will focus on developing methodologies to help quantify and communicate the uncertainties resulting from pooling data across the supply chain. We will develop crop and livestock case studies building links with RDs 2.3.9 & 2.4.1 (barley) and WP2.2 & 2.4 (beef supply chains).

  • Food Supply & Security
  • 2016-2022
Water and its ecosystem functions

To understand how  pressures such as problems arising from agricultural and urban land use and, increasingly, climate change affect the biophysical and ecological processes within our catchments.  The focus of the research is on understanding how the biophysical and ecological processes within water bodies operate and contribute to the delivery of ecosystem function and health.

  • Water
  • 2016-2022
Water environment, resilience and adaptation to change

To evaluate the capacity of water resources to adapt to changing environmental and socio-economic conditions, in order to maintain key functions, goods and services (resilience) 

  • Water
  • 2016-2022
Welfare assessment techniques

To improve assessment of animal welfare in order to be able to characterise where animals are experiencing a net positive Quality of Life: Welfare of farmed livestock is an important ethical concern. Policy interest in the concept of 'positive welfare’ underlies our work. For this we aim to develop innovative welfare assessment techniques that improve our assessment of positive and negative welfare and overall Quality of Life.

  • Animal Welfare
  • Livestock Improvement
  • Improving Agricultural Practice
  • 2016-2022

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