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Securing a Safer, Healthier and More Sustainable

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Securing a Safer, Healthier and More Sustainable Healthy Plants. Healthy People. Healthy Planet. Securing a safer, healthier and more sustainable future through the power of plant and microbial science The Healthy Plants, The John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Healthy People, Healthy Laboratory are at the forefront of efforts Planet (HP³) project is to bring this vision to life, but getting there requires a step change in capability that is only our vision for achieving a achievable through new ways of working. safer, healthier and more We are working with UKRI’s Biotechnology and sustainable future through Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) the power of plant and to develop the case for investment in our new infrastructure, and are seeking private capital microbial science. investment alongside public funding to enable us to realise our exciting and ambitious vision. Here, we lay out the near and very real threats facing humankind and the planet more widely, the potential for plant and microbial science The John Innes Centre is an independent, to overcome them, and why a UK hub for plant and microbial science would provide pivotal international research centre specialising resource for developing solutions. in plant science and microbiology. It is a registered charity funded by UKRI-BBSRC, the European Research Council and other charitable sources including the John Innes Foundation. The John Innes Centre uses genetic approaches to answer fundamental questions of bioscience, and to translate the answers into environmental and societal benefits. For more information, please contact Felicity Perry, Head of The Sainsbury Laboratory is a Communications and Engagement world-leading independent research at the John Innes Centre: institute that specialises in plant-microbe Email: [email protected] interactions, funded by The Gatsby Charitable Telephone: +44 (0) 1603 450 269 Mail: John Innes Centre, Foundation, The University of East Anglia and Norwich, UKRI-BBSRC. Its work is focused on leading NR4 7UH global efforts to reduce crop losses to disease. 2 3 The current COVID-19 Our response to the pandemic has also shown pandemic is a stark us that transformational collaboration at pace demonstration of our collective is possible. The John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory are uniquely positioned to vulnerability and a reminder lead the scientific advances needed to solve these that our world is more era-defining threats. Our exciting discoveries interconnected than we had ever in plant science, genetics, microbiology and plant-microbe interactions have had a huge realised. Damaging pathogens impact, but advances in technology, scientific could just as easily emerge in practice and computing mean there is even the form of crop diseases or greater potential to be realised. human infections by bacteria Working together in a new, collaborative, interdisciplinary and technology-driven way, we with antimicrobial resistance, aim to tackle and overcome the biggest threats putting our food security facing the world, making the scientific potential and health at enormous risk. of today meet the global challenges of tomorrow. With the required attention, collaboration and support, we believe that a revolution in plant and microbial research can be achieved that will help us deal with these era-defining challenges in a sustainable way that protects food security, enhances biodiversity and reduces the risk of future viral threats to humans or plants. We want to establish the very best plant and microbial science laboratory infrastructure anywhere in the world. Capital investment in cutting edge, future-proofed facilities will create a UK hub for world-leading plant and microbial research that will supercharge our national ability to translate scientific knowledge into practical solutions. Professor Dale Sanders FRS Director, JIC Professor Nick Talbot FRS Executive Director, TSL 4 5 Contents 01 Global risks: why we need to act now 08 Feeding the world: food security and sustainable agriculture 10 Human health risks: antimicrobial resistance and viral pandemics 11 Climate change and disruptions to food supply 12 02 Healthy Plants; Healthy People; Healthy Planet: 14 plant and microbial science as a solution Healthy Plants: protecting and improving food sources sustainably 16 Healthy People: protecting humanity from disease and 18 unlocking the health benefits of plants and microbes Healthy Planet: harnessing the power of plants 20 and microbes to combat climate change 03 HP³ in action: 22 Delivering the key levers of change 24 How we’re bringing our vision to life 26 04 The step-change needed to meet these challenges: 28 A national plant and microbial science hub to address global issues 30 Enable a new kind of scientific research 32 Support government policy and strategy 34 6 7 Every minute the world loses 23 hectares of arable land, yet every day there are Global 160,000 more mouths to feed. We take risks: why Feeding for granted an abundance of affordable the world produce year-round, but it comes at high we need to cost to wildlife and soil due to high-intensity agricultural practices. We must secure and act now increase yields in a sustainable way if we are We have a rapidly closing to supply enough food to feed the world. window of time in which to address three critical The death toll associated with antimicrobial resistance could reach 10 million a year challenges facing society by 2050: more than cancer and diabetes and the planet that Combating combined. Antibiotics - once highly global health effective at treating infections caused by sustains us. bacteria, parasites, and fungi increasingly threats fail to kill these microbes due to over-use. New and deadly viral infections are emerging that require rapid responses to develop cures. The recent COVID-19 1 pandemic demonstrates this vulnerability. Environmental degradation allows new pests and diseases to appear and old ones to re-emerge in food-growing regions, putting 40% of global crop yields Climate at risk. We must fight this threat while change dramatically decreasing the shocking carbon footprint of food production, which is responsible for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We must transform our entire agricultural system to increase resilience to this threat. 8 9 Feeding the world: food security Human health risks: antimicrobial and sustainable agriculture resistance and viral pandemics A growing world population Population increases lead to a higher demand Many bacterial pathogens Antibiotics that were once highly effective requires an ever-increasing for food, while consumer demand forces have developed resistance to at treating infections caused by bacteria, volume of food to sustain commercial crop and food growers to yield antibiotics, while the current parasites and fungi are increasingly failing a greater variety of produce at affordable to kill the microbes they were designed to it. Every day, there are over prices. The result is high-intensity agricultural pandemic demonstrates a combat. The over-use of antibiotics has led 160,000 additional mouths practices, which degrade soil health and virus that resists existing to a widespread risk of ill-health or death to feed, with a decreasing jeopardise the success of future growth. anti-viral drugs. that was previously preventable. area of arable land A changing environment is also bringing Globally, it is predicted that deaths arising from new types of pests and diseases. When left antimicrobial resistance will reach 10 million available for growing the unchecked, these can result in decreases of a year by 2050. This would represent a higher food required to do so. crop yields of up to 40%. Current projections death toll than cancer and diabetes combined. suggest that there will be 2.1 billion more The financial incentive for the private sector to mouths to feed by 2050, and developing develop new antibiotics is limited given the high disease-resistant crops will be a key part costs of research and development and the of sustainably feeding them. likely limited lifetime of efficacy of any product. Simply put, we are not currently able to The wider economic and health produce food with a sufficiently high level of Deaths arising costs of antimicrobial resistance nutrients, or with a sufficient yield to fulfil represent a public threat that is future needs. Urgent action is required to from antimicrobial too large to ignore and cannot be improve the sustainability of agriculture, and resistance will considered the sole responsibility to protect plants from a growing threat of reach 10 million of the private sector. We must put in Food requirements pests and diseases. place a public sector delivery pipeline a year by 2050 that takes account of these risks. in sub-Saharan Plants are just as susceptible to pathogens as humans are, and recent events have shown There is a significant gap between the level Africa are expected we lack resilience in the face of emerging of research going into discovering new and to triple by 2050 diseases. A global pandemic affecting one effective antibiotics and the inputs required major food crop would be no less devastating to discover and synthesise new solutions. as a result of than COVID-19 in terms of its humanitarian We must close the gap between urgent public population growth consequences. health needs and private sector constraints. 10 11 Agricultural practices contribute up to 9% Climate change and disruptions of the to food supply UK’s total greenhouse The climate emergency gas emissions, has the capacity to cause widespread disruption to global food supplies. Flooding with around half is as high a risk as drought when climate cycles change, and this volatility is having an increasingly damaging impact on our ability to create 1/2 a sustainable supply of food for a growing global population. of the This risk of flooding is coupled sector’s with the additional threat of carbon emissions arising higher temperatures and the from fertiliser production. impact they have on the fertility and therefore yields of the Beyond the material impact, these emissions world’s major crops.
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