Europe's first precision-bred oilseed rape heads to UK farms
Europe’s first precision-bred oilseed rape is set to be grown on commercial farms under a new £2.5m UK research project launched this week.
The three-year LLS-ERASED project will move precision-bred oilseed rape out of the laboratory and into farmer-led field trials, as part of efforts to rebuild the crop’s role as the UK’s most important break crop.
Led by BOFIN Farmers, the project is funded through Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.
It brings together farmers, plant breeders, crop scientists and agronomists to tackle light leaf spot, the most damaging disease affecting oilseed rape.
Light leaf spot is now the leading disease threat to the crop, with estimated yield losses rising from £94m in 2017 to more than £300m by 2022.
Despite widespread fungicide use, control has become increasingly unreliable as pathogen populations evolve and resistance to azole fungicides spreads. Currently available varieties have also struggled to provide durable protection.
The project aims to address this by developing oilseed rape varieties with reduced susceptibility to light leaf spot using precision-breeding techniques, which speed up the introduction of beneficial traits without introducing foreign DNA.
Crucially, the new traits will be tested on commercial farms, supported by disease forecasting and decision-support tools designed to target fungicide use more accurately.
LLS-ERASED project lead Tom Allen-Stevens of BOFIN Farmers said: “This project is game-changing for farmers.”
He added: “It will put precision-bred oilseed rape technology on to their farms for the first time across Europe.”
At the centre of the work is a newly identified plant susceptibility gene. Researchers have shown that switching off this gene using precision breeding can reduce the ability of the light leaf spot pathogen to infect the crop, offering a potentially more durable form of protection than conventional resistance genes.
The scientific work is being led by the John Innes Centre and the University of Hertfordshire, with ADAS and Scottish Agronomy focusing on integrating the new trait into practical, farm-ready disease management strategies.
A consortium of UK and European oilseed rape breeders is involved in testing the material in elite commercial backgrounds, while the UK Agri-Tech Centre is overseeing project delivery and coordination to ensure the outputs remain focused on on-farm adoption.
The project also involves US-based company Cibus, whose Rapid Trait Development System allows precise, transgene-free edits to be introduced directly into elite breeding lines, reducing the time needed to bring new traits to market.
LLS-ERASED technical lead Dr Rachel Wells of the John Innes Centre said: “I am really excited to move our resistant material from the laboratory to field scale trials to see how it performs in a real-world setting.”
She added: “Precision Breeding offers us an excellent opportunity to develop material to combat our pests and pathogens while supporting sustainable farming.”
Alongside new varieties, the project will deliver a farmer-led platform to support adoption, including a disease-management tool combining weather data, pathogen monitoring and on-farm trial results.
Professor Yongju Huang of the University of Hertfordshire said: “Combined with host resistance information about the pathogen, this project will develop an evidence-based real-time decision support system for farmers to achieve effective disease control and reduce the reliance on chemicals.”
On-farm trials will take place across England over the three-year project, with results feeding directly into a grower-led knowledge exchange network.
The approach is intended to establish a pipeline for future precision-bred traits, including resistance to other diseases and pests such as cabbage stem flea beetle.
