John Innes Centre wins Defra funding for crop innovations

The Eastern Daily Press reported that the John Innes Centre has won Defra funding for a set of crop innovation projects, a further sign that the UK is treating crop biotechnology as industrial infrastructure rather than as a laboratory curiosity.

QuberTech is part of that picture. The company leads QuBOOSTR, a precision breeding project run with the John Innes Centre and LettUs Grow and backed with £2.4 million from the government's Farming Innovation Programme, delivered with Innovate UK.

The work is specific: use gene editing techniques and analytical tools to improve dandelion as a rubber crop, so that yield, consistency and processability reach the level an industrial buyer can specify and repeat. A promising plant is not the same thing as a dependable feedstock, and closing that distance is what the programme is for.

Doing it at Norwich Research Park matters. The site puts the crop science, the analytical capability and the controlled environment growing expertise within walking distance of each other, which is why QuberTech is based there.