Hutton Highlights, February 2021

Some dates for your diary Date Event Location Notes Held over til 2022 SSCR Soft Fruit Winter Meeting James Hutton Institute, Invergowrie 25 February 2021 SSCR Combinable and Energy Crops Winter Meeting: “Making the Most of Your Soils” 1:00 to 3:00 pm, by Webex. Register here . 4 March 2021 SSCR Potato Winter Meeting 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. To be held digitally on Microsoft Teams. To register email Jennie.Brierley@ hutton.ac.uk by 26 Feb. 22 March 2021 World Water Day Now taking place digitally, from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. Register on Eventbrite . Delegates will receive a link to the platform closer to the event. POSTPONED TO 2022 European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) Animal Plant and Soil Traces expert working group (APST) meeting 17–20 June 2021 Royal Highland Show Ingliston Showground, Edinburgh Hutton will participate if the Show goes ahead, subject to Covid. 1 July 2021 Arable Scotland Balruddery or virtual, depending on Covid restrictions Details to be confirmed. July TBC 2021 Fruit for the Future James Hutton Institute Further details to follow 12 August 2021 Potatoes in Practice Balruddery Farm, Angus The UK’s largest field event for the potato sector hopes to return this year if Covid restrictions allow. 1-3 November 2021 43rd TB Macaulay Lecture Glasgow by invitation and application only. Contact Nicola.Strachan@ hutton.ac.uk Heads up - the answer lies under our feet Head of Ecological Food Systems Dr Pete Iannetta, Hutton research colleagues Dr Cathy Hawes and Dr Alison Karley, and David Michie of Soil Association Scotland produced this article for World Soil Day on 5 December 2020. World leaders will grapple with the seemingly intractable challenge of climate change at the 26th UN Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in November. Citizens, too, care passionately about the environment and the natural world, and many feel overwhelmed and helpless at the thought of ever-increasing climate extremes. There is however real hope that a big part of the solution lies under our feet and is connected to what’s on our plates. Changes in the food supply system could make a huge positive contribution to combatting climate change starting by increasing the quantity of carbon stored in soil - which will also regenerate good soil-health. Good soil health is not only the foundation of a more sustainable and resilient food system, it also helps stabilise geochemical cycles of water, nitrogen and carbon, helping reduce the impacts of climate change. What sort of foods can help improve soil health? Crop plants within the legume family like peas and beans stand apart in this regard. These crops need no synthetic nitrogen fertilisers because they use a natural biological capability that takes nitrogen from the air to make the biologically useful compounds such as protein to empower growth and development. As part of a diverse and holistic crop rotation, legumes help improve soil function and literally put back more than they take out, reducing greenhouse gases and increasing carbon capture in the soil. Legume species such as clover can deliver similar benefit through their consumption by cattle and sheep which - if reared naturally outdoors on high nature value grasslands - can also help combat climate change. To multiply the climate benefits, arable and pastoral systems exploiting legumes can also be combined with trees in agroforestry systems. Ensuring that food is produced in a way that is good for the environment calls for innovation and a redesign of our food- systems from farm-to-fork. Every link in the value chain needs to be aware of this imperative and the importance of healthy soil is a major part of encouraging the necessary changes in management and behaviours. Increasingly, consumers are asking questions about the environmental impact of their food choices, and the credentials of the many food and drink which are now marketed as sustainable. Many businesses have been quick to realise the commercial opportunities of this shift in consumer awareness and choice. This is manifest in the labelling of many common products, and the ‘language of sustainability’ is tipped as the top 2021 fashion for food and drink marketing. Consequently, innovative, responsive research and robust evidence bases remain essential to ensure that claims regarding environmental benefits live up to consumers’ hopes. For example, we see this in innovative food and drink products such as the world’s first ‘climate positive’ gin from Arbikie Farm and Arbikie Distillery, which combine their effort in a ‘field-to-bottle’ approach. In this system, scientists work with business in an open and transparent manner to discover that the greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by the use of peas. The high level of legumes now cultivated on-farm will help improve the soil, locking in carbon and organic nitrogen, and high-protein spent raw materials are reused in animal feed. This home-grown provision can replace imported soybeans cultivated in what was biodiverse rainforest and  cerrado  regions of South America. 22 Hutton Highlights February 2021 23 Comments?