AUSTRALIA

Grass pea is a pulse crop with remarkable tolerance to drought as well as flooding, making its seeds an important local food source in several tropical countries, especially Ethiopia, Sudan and Eritrea as well as India and Bangladesh. In times of weather extremes causing crop losses, grass pea often remains one of the most available foods and the cheapest source of protein, helping people survive during food shortages. The mounting challenge of climate change increases the need for crops that can be grown sustainably and withstand weather extremes. Through its 8000-year history of cultivation grass pea has been a part of human diets - from Neolithic sites in the Balkans, through the bronze-age middle east, the Roman Empire and medieval Europe until the modern day. But despite its value for food and nutritional security, grass pea carries the stigma of a potentially dangerous food. Its seeds and leaves contain a neurotoxic compound that can cause a debilitating disease known as neurolathyrism. This disease only appears in people who are malnourished and consume large amounts of grass pea over several months. Yet the fear of neurolathyrism, which has been known since antiquity, has led to grass pea being undervalued by farmers, breeders and scientists, making it an 'orphan crop'. There is no significant international trade in grass pea and too little research to develop the potential of this resilient, sustainable source of protein. Grass pea is able to fix nitrogen from the air (through symbiosis with nodulating bacteria), can efficiently use soil phosphate through its mycorrhizal associations, can penetrate into hard, heavy soil and is relatively tolerant to pests and diseases. All these characteristics make it an ideal crop for agriculture where farming inputs (fertiliser, pesticides, irrigation, etc.) are limited, as is the case in most smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa. We therefore believe that improved grass pea varieties can have a significant impact beyond the millions of people who already cultivate it in Africa today and could become a crucial sustainable food source for many more. Our project aims to remove the limitations of this crop by using the tools and resources we have already developed in our previous research to breed new varieties that are safe to consume, high-yielding, nutritious and resilient to environmental stress. We have identified new low-toxin variants with lower beta-ODAP contents than any existing varieties. In addition we have sequenced and assembled the grass pea genome and transcriptomes under stress and non-stress conditions and we are working to enable modern crop improvement methods on the back of these. Through this research partnership we have access to grass pea lines representing the global diversity of the crop and those that are locally adapted to East Africa and to expertise on smallholder agriculture and seed systems. The UPGRADE project will build on this foundation and create a partnership to translate bioscience research advances on grass pea into new varieties with tangible benefits for smallholder farmers. Besides this, our research will generate valuable data on the performance of grass pea and the physiological role and regulation of the production of the toxin in the plant. Through a better foundational understanding, we and other researchers will be better able to direct future breeding efforts and deliver the promise of grass pea.

This project will investigate the drivers of eating behaviour that occur during a prolonged period of overconsumption (excess intake of calories). Overconsumption is important as a major cause of weight (re)gain and obesity. The type of society which exists in many developed countries is said to represent an 'obesigenic' environment. This type of environment facilitates a high consumption of food (as well as encouraging sedentariness) and generates rapid weight gain that leads to obesity. The obesigenic environment 'offers' the possibility for people to overeat. People are able to eat too much of some foods because of excessive activation of hedonic (pleasure related) processes, or because of a defect in homeostatic processes. Firstly this means that people will eat more because of elevated sensations of pleasure during eating or heightened motivation to obtain a looked-for food. These (hedonic) processes are termed 'liking' & 'wanting'. Secondly, people will eat more because their physiological systems fail to shut off eating quickly (leading to large meals) or because food fails to suppress their hunger after eating. These last two processes are called 'satiation' and 'satiety'. The pleasure of eating can be divided into two components /'liking' & 'wanting'. Although these terms often occur together, they are quite different. Sometimes we do not have a strong wanting for foods that we like a lot; at other times we have a strong wanting for foods that are not especially liked (e.g. potatoes/food staples). Importantly, we have developed procedures that measure both the liking & wanting of foods. It is not known if overconsumption results from an increase in liking for certain foods, or from an increase in wanting for those foods. We will identify the types of foods selected during a prolonged period of overeating and whether this is driven to a greater degree by increased liking or wanting. At the same time it is important to be able to measure the actual changes in processes that control meal size (satiation) and which lead to the reduction of hunger after eating (satiety). We will identify which aspect of eating plays the major role in allowing overeating /a large meal size, or weak suppression of hunger. This will inform us how to use specific foods to control these two aspects of eating. It is important to be able to relate changes in sensations and behavior to underlying physiological processes. This means measuring chemicals in the blood that are known to be involved in appetite control. Some of these chemicals are thought to be involved mainly in hunger (ghrelin) or in satiety (GLP1, CCK) or in both hunger/satiety, liking & wanting (leptin). We will therefore assess the particular ways in which these signals influence overconsumption. Generating overconsumption in the long term leads to a gain in weight which may never be lost again and could impair health. We have therefore developed a 'safe' model of overconsumption that has arisen from a BBSRC project just finished. When overweight and obese people volunteer for a 12 week programme of supervised daily exercise (of fixed energy expenditure) some individuals lose weight and others do not. However, independent of weight loss all volunteers show decreases in heart rate, blood pressure, and an increase in fitness (key to becoming healthy). The reason behind this variability in response is that the poor responders who do not lose weight have increased their food intake to negate the energy lost. This increase can be interpreted as overconsumption and amounts to ~290 kcal/day. In absence of exercise this would lead to a dramatic weight increase of more than 6kg over a year. Therefore we can use this 'safe' form of overconsumption to examine changes in underlying behavioral drivers /liking & wanting, satiation and satiety/ and their association with signalling peptides. This provides a relevant long term method for investigating the drivers of food behaviour.

Robots and autonomous systems (RAS) will revolutionise the world's economy and society for the foreseeable future, working for us, beside us and interacting with us. The UK urgently needs graduates with the technical skills and industry awareness to create an innovation pipeline from academic research to global markets. Key application areas include manufacturing, construction, transport, offshore energy, defence, and health and well-being. The recent Industrial Strategy Review set out four Grand Challenges that address the potential impact of RAS on the economy and society at large. Meeting these challenges requires the next generation of graduates to be trained in key enabling techniques and underpinning theories in RAS and AI and be able to work effectively in cross-disciplinary projects. The proposed overarching theme of the CDT-RAS can be characterised as 'safe interactions'. Firstly, robots must safely interact physically with environments, requiring compliant manipulation, active sensing, world modelling and planning. Secondly, robots must interact safely with people either in face-to-face natural dialogue or through advanced, multimodal interfaces. Thirdly, key to safe interactions is the ability for introspective condition monitoring, prognostics and health management. Finally, success in all these interactions depends on foundational interaction enablers such as techniques for vision and machine learning. The Edinburgh Centre for Robotics (ECR) combines Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh and has shown to be an effective venue for a CDT. ECR combines internationally leading science with an outstanding track record of exploitation, and world class infrastructure with approximately £100M in investment from government and industry including the National ROBOTARIUM. A critical mass of over 50 experienced supervisors cover the underpinning disciplines crucial to RAS safe interaction. With regards facilities, ECR is transformational in the range of robots and spaces that can be experimentally configured to study both the physical interaction through robot embodiment, as well as, in-field remote operations and human-robot teaming. This, combined with supportive staff and access to Project Partners, provides an integrated capability unique in the world for exploring collaborative interaction between humans, robots and their environments. The reputation of ECR is evidenced by the additional support garnered from 31 industry Project Partners, providing an additional 23 studentships and overall additional support of approximately £11M. The CDT-RAS training programme will align with and further develop the highly successful, well-established CDT-RAS four-year PhD programme, with taught courses on the underpinning theory and state of the art and research training, closely linked to career relevant skills in creativity, RI and innovation. The CDT-RAS will provide cohort-based training with three graduate hallmarks: i) advanced technical training with ii) a foundation international experience, and iii) innovation training. Students will develop an assessed learning portfolio, tailored to individual interests and needs, with access to industry and end-users as required. Recruitment efforts will focus on attracting cohorts of diverse, high calibre students, who have the hunger to learn. The single-city location of Edinburgh enables stimulating, cohort-wide activities that build commercial awareness, cross-disciplinary teamwork, public outreach, and ethical understanding, so that Centre graduates will be equipped to guide and benefit from the disruptions in technology and commerce. Our vision for the CDT-RAS is to build on the current success and ensure the CDT-RAS continues to be a major international force that can make a generational leap in the training of innovation-ready postgraduates, who will lead in the safe deployment of robotic and autonomous systems in the real world.