Research cash boom at Harper Adams University College

Exciting new farming techniques which will see food waste used to generate fuel and electricity will be developed at Shropshire's only university after £100,000 of funding was secured.

Staff and students at Harper Adams University College, near Newport, will carry out research into pyrolysis, which sees farm, food and green waste turned into electricity. It has been hailed as an alternative to sending waste to landfill.

The project is understood to be worth about £70,000 and will see Paul Moran, estates manager at Harper Adams, work with colleagues in Holland and Germany and at Aston University in Birmingham.

It has been funded by INTERREG, a programme that encourages European partnerships. According to staff at Harper Adams, pyrolysis creates fuel from farm, food and local authority green waste. A gas is produced which is then burned to generate electricity, a liquid fuel and waste water.

Research at Harper Adams will look at extracting further benefits from the waste water. Professor Peter Kettlewell, research co-ordinator, said: "Pyrolysis is an alternative to incineration and landfill, and makes use of what would otherwise be a waste product.

"We hope to refine this process so it can become a practical method that can be used to dispose of waste and create electricity and fuel."

Meanwhile a further £30,000 will be invested into a research project to find better uses for expensive fertilisers.

Fertilisers need beneficial bugs that live in soil to help them be taken in better by plant roots. By selecting the crop varieties that are better at producing the food for these bugs to grow, researchers can in turn help the plants to grow better.

The project is being sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Crop Improvement Research Club. Professor Kettlewell said: "If we can do this, it means farmers won't need to use as much fertiliser because the plants will be more efficient."

By Sean Wozencroft