The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is funding research into food security, with rapid global population growth, a changing climate and disruption to global trading patterns causing widespread concern.

A recent BBSRC publication, The Bioscience behind: secure harvests, highlights key BBSRC-supported research into achieving global food security. The BBSRC invests around £78 million a year in plant and crop science research at universities and institutes across the UK.

One challenge for achieving food security is increasing crop yields. Researchers at the John Innes Centre, a division of the BBSRC, are investigating a gene that controls flowering time in UK wheat and barley varieties with the aim to help plant breeders to optimise flowering time and yield for a changing UK climate.

Another way to help secure harvests is to protect crops from the threat of pests and diseases. BBSRC research into the life cycle and biology of pests and disease causing organisms is underpinning several online forecasting services that provide plant growers with frequent updates on when an outbreak is likely in their region.

This would allow growers to prepare controls against diseases such as phoma stem canker, a fungal infection that can cause losses of £100m in epidemic years and predicted to increase in severity with climate change.

Professor Janet Allen, BBSRC director of research, said: "Supporting and funding research to underpin food security is vitally important and ensuring we are able to grow enough high-quality food in a world facing a food security crisis is a central aspect of this.

“We need a wide range of research activities across a number of disciplines in order to deliver sustainable improvements in yield and BBSRC already funds much research in this area. We are now leading efforts to bring together the variety of funders and policy-makers working in this area to ensure we know what scientific challenges we face and that we are concentrating on the best ways to overcome them."

BBSRC is leading the development of a strategy that will bring together the interests of all the funders in food security and that it will put out to consultation in the spring.

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