New 'world-class' centres taking shape at Shropshire's Harper Adams University

Both of the new facilities are set to be up and running by the end of the year.

The Agritech Innovation Hub was visited last week by board members from the Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre.

Harper Adams vice-chancellor Dr David Llewellyn said the new hub will be a "world-class" facility and part of a nationwide push by farmers to improve economic performance with technology.

He added: "It will provide a national focus for collaborative applied research and development between industry and academia, demonstration of new technologies and their integration into precision farming systems, including their economic benefits through the network of satellite farms.

"An important role of the Hub will be to increase farmer uptake of innovative technologies to increase the overall benefits to UK farming. We will undertake participatory workshops with farmers and smallholders to allow them to jointly create a vision for the use of technologies in agriculture alongside scientists and engineers."

The hub sits next to the Dairy Crest Innovation Centre on the south side of the university campus, at Edgmond near Newport.

The Dairy Crest facility itself first opened to the public earlier this year, with a ceremony attended by Princess Anne.

Work has also started on a Precision Dairy Unit that will serve the livestock elements of Agri-Epi.

The £750,000 facility will operate alongside Harper Adams' existing dairy unit and will be one of three such units within Agri-EPI, with Kingshay Farming in Somerset and SRUC in Dumfries involved in creating more

And the extension to the Princess Margaret Laboratories is on track.

Currently taking shape at the centre of the campus it will provide a range of new, modern teaching and project labs to support studies.