Researchers are creating resilient crops and developing innovative technologies to combat climate change stresses and tackle food insecurity.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham are advancing innovations for a more sustainable future, in everything from food security to chemical pollution. They are working on novel approaches to develop more resilient agricultural crops; developing innovative technologies for food production; and pressing for regulatory changes for greater sustainability.
Global leaders set out to eradicate hunger by 2030 under the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet rather than diminishing, the global food crisis is growing worse. The combined effects of conflict, global cost-of-living crisis, and climate change left over 330m people facing acute food insecurity in 2023—an increase of almost 200m on pre-pandemic levels. And the crisis is likely to deepen further: the heatwaves, droughts and floods triggered by climate change are threatening crops, just as a growing global population demands a huge uptick in food production.
Scientists at the University of Birmingham are working to secure future food supplies, by creating more resilient agricultural crops and developing innovative technologies for food production. “It’s a race against time to maintain crop production in the face of climate change—and plant science has an important role to play in combating food insecurity,” says Christine Foyer, a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Birmingham.
“We had big issues with food security during Covid-19. And with the war in Ukraine, the vulnerability of our food system in the UK was really compounded,” adds Dr Helen Onyeaka, deputy director of the Deputy Director of the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA). “Climate change now makes those systems even more fragile. With the increase in temperature, we are going to have a lot of issues with food production and food security.”
Global warming threatens many crops, from staples such as wheat and barley to the vines that produce wine—partly because weather extremes harm their pollen, which diminishes their capacity to reproduce. Climate change is also expected to increase the spread of pests and diseases that ravage plants, deplete fisheries and threaten livestock, making regions that are already vulnerable to food shortages more so.
Existing technologies have not yet yielded the kind of advances that are needed to create crops that can survive the coming extremes, says Professor Foyer. “Few drought-tolerant crops have ever been produced, because it’s very hard to do. We’ve had marginal improvements, but no big leap forward,” she explains. “A step change is needed in crop development”, she argues, to prevent a deepening global food crisis.
These two things go hand-in-hand: understanding the processes and genes involved in crop resilience, and then putting those genes more rapidly into crops.
And there are signs of progress. Thanks to advancements in genomics, scientists now understand much more about the genes that make certain crop varieties more heat- or drought-tolerant. Breeding new ones takes time, and has proved a bottleneck in the effort to develop hardier species—but gene editing is now being applied to many crops to hasten that process. “These two things go hand-in-hand: understanding the processes and genes involved in crop resilience, and then putting those genes more rapidly into crops,” explains Professor Foyer. “This is where the future is.”
Her lab is testing a novel method for boosting crop resilience—by using reactive oxygen molecules to enhance their stress tolerance. Those reactive molecules are produced as cells metabolise oxygen, and are known for their toxicity (antioxidants are important for removing them). But reactive oxygen can also be harnessed productively by cells. “We now realise that reactive oxygen is used by cells in many ways—as signalling molecules, for regulatory processes, and to destroy invaders,” Professor Foyer explains. That process can be leveraged to create hardier crops. “I look at the ways reactive oxygen species are used in signalling pathways to enhance stress tolerance,” she says.
University of Birmingham researchers are advancing other frontiers in sustainable food production. Dr Onyeaka, an industrial microbiologist, investigates how microorganisms, or microbes, can be used to create more sustainable food supply chains. “My research is all about how we can produce food in a sustainable way, and enhance supply chain resilience, using innovative technology,” she says.
One approach is to develop foods from microbes such as algae—which are fast-growing and nutrient-rich, and use fewer resources than traditional agricultural methods. “If we can produce food using microorganisms, we don’t need land, we don’t need fertilisers, and we can produce it in very large quantities sustainably,” Dr Onyeaka explains. Her lab is currently developing protein-rich algae which can be made into flour for the baking industry. This, she argues, could “provide a sustainable way of making bread and biscuits.”
Other microbial technologies could help tackle the scourge of food waste. The United Nations estimates that about one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted every year. That is enough to feed two billion people. And when it is sent to landfill, the waste decomposes anaerobically, producing methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2. Globally, food waste accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than any individual country except America or China, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)—making it a major source of global emissions.
To address that problem, Dr Onyeaka is researching ways of preserving food for longer, for instance by using microorganisms to produce antimicrobial peptides that can extend a product’s shelf life. At the same time, she is developing innovative ways of keeping waste from landfill by converting leftovers into valuable products. “Instead of dumping this huge amount of food waste, we can use it to make things that are very valuable,” she says.
Food waste has long provided inputs for products such as renewable biofuels, agricultural feed and compost. But it can be used for higher value components too, notes Dr Onyeaka. Her lab is developing biodegradable plastics from the yeast slurry that is leftover from brewing. “We’re trying to incorporate an antimicrobial into that biodegradable plastic, so that it can be used as a really safe alternative for food packaging,” she says. She is also developing technology to remove bioactive compounds from common waste products such as coffee beans and eggshells, for use in the pharmaceutical or veterinary industries. “Chemical processing is usually used to get bioactive compounds from food waste. So we’re looking at how we can do that sustainably, using a non-chemical process,” says Dr Onyeaka.
Instead of dumping this huge amount of food waste, we can use it to make things that are very valuable.
Climate change poses another problem for food supplies: as CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, the nutritional value of plants appears to be falling. “It’s very likely that the nutritional quality of our food is going to get poorer because of high CO2,” says Professor Foyer.
That is because plants grow faster in high-CO2 environments—converting more of the gas to glucose via photosynthesis—but cannot evolve quickly enough to metabolise all the extra carbon. “They take up CO2 and become engorged with carbon and full of carbohydrate,” Professor Foyer explains. “That puts pressure on all the other processes. They can’t take up nitrogen, sulphur, iron and zinc, so they get very poor in nutrients.”
That is likely to worsen the global phenomenon of “hidden hunger”, caused by micronutrient deficiencies in our diet, she argues. And it is not only human food supplies which are threatened. At the University of Birmingham’s Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Facility, BIFoR FACE—an area of British woodland exposed to the levels of CO2 we are on course to have by the middle of this century—Professor Foyer has found that the nutritional quality of acorns is declining, with implications for the insects and animals that feed on them.
BIFoR FACE, one of only three such carbon-enrichment facilities globally, will be a critical tool for measuring the effects of rising CO2 on food supplies in the coming years, she says: “The fact that we can see the long-term effects of high CO2 on plants in the environment is really important. The great benefit of being here is we can see the effect on the ecosystems over time. And that data will also be useful to crops.”
To scale such emerging innovations, the University of Birmingham fosters collaboration with other stakeholders. Through BISCA, the university “brings academics together with external stakeholders to see how we can collaborate on real-life solutions to climate change problems,” says Dr Onyeaka, adding:
“We are trying to bridge the gap between academics, industry and policymakers to come up with forward-thinking and disruptive ways of working.”
Dr Onyeaka and Professor Foyer work with leading global food companies including Mondelēz International and Ferrero Rocher to help them improve sustainability in their operations.
Yet tackling the food crisis will also require efforts by consumers, Dr Onyeaka stresses. Mindful purchasing can help us cut food waste and save money in the process, she advises. By shopping for locally-produced products, and reducing meat consumption, we can cut the carbon footprint of our diets. Climate change poses a critical threat to global food supplies. It will take a united effort to tackle it.
Other research at the University of Birmingham is exploring ways to reduce risks associated with another threat to sustainability: chemicals. In 2019 over 2 million people died as a result of exposure to chemicals. And the harm they cause extends beyond humans; not only are they a major contributor to biodiversity loss but they are also routinely tested on animals. As well as raising ethical concerns, many scientists believe there are better ways of assessing the harmful impacts of chemicals.
“We’re seeking to eliminate animal testing—because we think it’s the right thing to do, but also because we believe that other methods can give us a much better picture of the effects of chemicals,” says Robert Lee, Professor of Law and Director of Education for the Centre for Environmental Research and Justice at the University of Birmingham.
These alternative methods, known as “new approach methodologies” (NAMs), incorporate biological and computational testing methods. “You can’t test on humans, but you can test on human cell lines cultured in the lab, or on invertebrate species that don’t feel pain, and then use supercomputing to interrogate the resulting data,” Professor Lee explains. He compares NAMs to the initial sequencing of the human genome in 2001, which helped achieve progress in areas such as cancer treatment. “What we’re doing is very similar; our modelling allows us to begin to track the adverse outcomes of chemicals,” he says.
Professor Lee and his colleagues are examining the barriers to the adoption of NAMs, many of which are behavioural. People are locked into traditional testing methods and are reluctant to break from them, he says. While many companies want to use NAMs, they fear that they will not pass risk assessment
requirements. “These methods are already used in the industry, but the data isn’t registered, so we don’t get spillovers of knowledge,” Professor Lee adds.
His team is advocating for regulatory reform in Europe. Most legislation on chemical hazards is limited in scope and based on traditional animal testing. A ban on animal testing, has been introduced in Europe for finished cosmetic products, and it is necessary to engage in an iterative process to accelerate NAM adoption in other sectors to generate better scientific outcomes, he argues. This would help address the problems posed by the 350,000 chemicals used globally—many of which are untested. NAMs also offer companies valuable information at an early phase, potentially providing them with faster and more cost-effective data about chemical risk.
“Traditional animal testing methods can’t tell you why and how the chemical caused harm; you know that the rat died, but not exactly why or what other associated health impacts it experienced,” says Professor Lee. “NAMs can tell us which gene was impacted, or what metabolomic effects occurred, so they’re better placed to help us understand how to protect human health and the environment from exposure to chemical hazards.”
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Professor of Plant Sciences
Professor Christine Helen Foyer is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Birmingham. She is an expert in plant metabolism and its regulation under optimal and stress conditions.
Associate Professor
Staff profile for Dr Helen Onyeaka
Professor of Law
Academic profile of Professor Robert Lee, Director of CEPLER at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, UK
