Two Teagasc research projects on agri-food have received funding worth €2.5 million. The funding comes under the joint Science Foundation Ireland/Teagasc themed research funding call, ‘Future Agri-Food’ and the successful projects are: 

Using precision technologies, technology platforms and computational biology to increase the economic and environmental sustainability of pasture-based production systems. This project is led by Dr. Laurence Shalloo, Teagasc in collaboration with Dr. William Donnelly of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and will look the use of information and communication technologies for agriculture, often referred to as smart agriculture or e-agriculture.
The development of early non-invasive and reliable molecular biomarkers of pregnancy in dairy cattle, which is led by Prof. Michael Diskin of Teagasc in collaboration with Prof. Mark Crowe of University College Dublin. The aims of this project are to use the latest targeted molecular approaches to validate and commercialise recent findings of putative novel molecular biomarkers of early pregnancy in dairy cows, and progress them to application and licensing as inline automated systems for pregnancy diagnosis in cattle.

Teagasc Director Prof. Gerry Boyle said: “The aim of the joint initiative between Teagasc and SFI was to link Teagasc scientists in the food and agriculture disciplines together with scientists from other disciplines such as ICT and sensors in order to strengthen innovation in the agri-food sector.”