RDE 462 - Paludiculture agronomy and scoping potential paludiculture food crops

Tender description

The Paludiculture Roadmap produced by the Lowland Agricultural Peat Task Force's Paludiculture Sub-group was published earlier this year. The agronomy pathway contains actions related to weeds, pests and diseases across years 2 and 3 of the roadmap. Whilst parts of this pathway will be informed by ongoing paludiculture projects and other parts of the roadmap, questions are arising regarding developing policy on paludiculture which means that Defra requires answers before 2025 (roadmap year 3). Concerns have been raised about the compatibility of currently used agricultural pesticides and herbicides with paludiculture and the limited active substances that are approved for use on land immediately adjacent to aquatic areas. Therefore, research is required to determine paludiculture compatible control measures for weeds, pests and diseases that could thrive under paludicultural conditions and threaten crop quality. Similarly, the agricultural policy and farming support pathway does not propose to start the investigation of paludiculture suitable food crops until roadmap year 3, but the ability of paludiculture to supply food crops is an important question in policy development. Therefore, the intention is to start scoping paludicultural food crops now, to identify the most promising crops for further investigation. This contract was awarded by DEFRA.