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We are the only university in the UK to have held a top ten QS World University Ranking for Agriculture and Forestry from 2017-2020 inclusive. We have held the top UK ranking in this area throughout the entire REF period.

Three Research Divisions were submitted into UOA6: Agri-Food Economics & Social Science, Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems and Food & Nutritional Sciences. These divisions enable research across the entire food system, addressing global challenges in relation to agriculture and food, influencing both practice and policy.

  • Ranked 8th in UK for research power.
UOA 6: Agriculture, Food and Vetinary Sciences, overall profile. The pie chart shows that 30% of research was recognised as world-leading, 50% as internationally excellent, 15% was recognised internationally, and 5% was recognised nationally.

Overall quality profile

Subprofiles

World-leading
(4*) 		 Internationally excellent
(3*) 		 Recognised internationally
(2*)		 Recognised nationally
(1*) 
Research outputs  27% 54%  17%  1% 
Research impacts  25%  42%  17%  17% 
Research environment  50%  50%  0%  0% 

Our research

Our research is organised into three groups:

  • Agri-Food Economics & Social Science: represents the largest collective of applied economists and social scientists in the UK focused on the agri-food sector. We undertake multidisciplinary research across the broad food chain, encompassing food and agriculture policy, health and nutrition, and the environment, incorporating agricultural, environmental, and behavioural economics.
  • Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems: is driven by the global challenge of how to produce sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet the needs of a growing population, ensuring that our production systems do not damage the environment or waste resources. 
  • Food & Nutritional Sciences: has a global reputation for innovative research that enhances food product and process sustainability, improves the nutritional and sensory quality of food, and evaluates impacts on health, cognition, nutrition, the human microbiome and well-being. 

A broader interdisciplinary perspective is achieved through engagement with The Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health, one of the University’s flagship Interdisciplinary Research Centres, and other research centres including the Centre for Dairy Research (CEDAR), the Hugh Sinclair Unit for Human Nutrition and the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research.

Staff and doctoral students

The Unit sustains a critical mass of over 350 researchers collaborating across an array of relevant disciplines. We submitted 82 staff (77.15 FTE) to REF2021, including 32 Professors, 18 Associate Professors, 19 Lecturers and 13 Independent Research Fellows. Over the assessment there were 275 doctoral completions; in 2019/20 doctoral students came from 52 countries including the UK. 

We lead the BBSRC FoodBioSystems Doctoral Training Partnership. We are a partner in BBSRC Collaborative Training Partnerships with Berry Gardens and Waitrose and a Marie Curie Training Network in Sustainable Technologies.

Research centres and partnerships

  • EIT Food: Reading leads the North-West Europe hub of this pan-European network which is working to build a future-fit food system.
  • Ceres Agri-Tech Knowledge Exchange Partnership: a partnership between five UK universities and three agricultural research institutes to drive agri-tech innovation.
  • Rural Business Research: a consortium of leading academic units delivering projects for government, including the annual Farm Business Survey.
  • Agrimetrics: a consortium that promotes the use of data, analytics and artificial intelligence to deliver sustainable food and farming solutions.
  • International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics: we are working with ICRISAT and the Smart Food initiative on a range of projects to combat hunger and malnutrition.

Sector recognition

Selected examples of national and international recognition between 2014 and 2020:

  • NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (2019-22) (Dr Deepa Senapathi)
  • Distinguished Service Award by the International Association for Engineering and Food (2019) (Professor Keshavan Niranjan)
  • Fellowship of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (2020) (Professor Keshavan Niranjan)
  • Nutrition Society Silver Medal (2020) (Dr Vimal Karani)
  • President, Nutrition Society, UK and Ireland (2019-23) (Professor Julie Lovegrove)
  • President, British Grassland Society (2018-19) (Professor Chris Reynolds)
 

Impact case studies

Examples of the impact our research has had at local, national and global levels.

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