Five UK Research Councils have announced the first joint interdisciplinary calls from the new £1.5Bn Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) unveiled by the Government in last year’s spending review.

Worth over £40M, the new calls are in non-communicable diseases, global infection and agriculture and food systems. They aim to leverage the UK’s world-class research base to help provide solutions to reduce and prevent diseases in humans and farmed animals, ensure a safe, nutritious and sustainable supply of food for a growing population and improve the life-long health of billions of people in low and middle income countries.

This funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC), with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) reflects the complexity of the challenges we face and the need for all disciplines to contribute to achieve international development goals.

These initial three calls aim to rapidly stimulate and enhance the research and partnerships needed to pave the way for ambitious GCRF programmes, while global challenges will also continue to be supported through other funding opportunities offered by the Research Councils.

Given the UK’s world-leading reputation, research is a highly effective way to achieve international development goals, tackle multifaceted global challenges and improve the social, economic and health outcomes for people in developing countries, as well as benefiting the UK.

Over the next five years, the Research Councils and the National Academies will deliver the GCRF to ensure the excellent UK research base takes a leading role in addressing the problems faced by developing countries and to build resilience and tackle major world challenges.

Agriculture and Food Systems call (~£15M) (led by BBSRC)

The challenge of ensuring access to a safe, sufficient and nutritious diet for a healthy life – whilst maintaining a healthy agri-environment – will intensify as demand for food rises with an increasing global population, urbanisation and changing diets. At the same time as ensuring a sustainable food supply chain, food production systems need to cope with climatic, political and financial instabilities, changes in cultures of consumption, and the need to protect and manage finite natural resources in order to foster more resilient systems, and align with public health goals.

These challenges are particularly acute in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) thus addressing these will help deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. New research is needed to help produce sufficient levels of safe food for a healthy life-course, using less land, water and energy, ensuring maintenance of the natural capital stocks and ecosystems services for future generations, whilst also engaging with the needs of local communities.

BBSRC’s usual eligibility rules will apply to this food security call with an emphasis on providing the foundations for ODA (Official Development Assistance)-relevant research by UK institutions – including the establishment/strengthening of partnerships with colleagues in LMICs who may be named in proposals as project partners.

Global infection call (~£9M) -Led by MRC

The recent outbreaks of Ebola and Zika, annual bird/swine flu endemics, threats to the safety of our food, the growing danger of antimicrobial resistance and the on-going global burden of foot and mouth disease, malaria and tuberculosis illustrate the large-scale challenge that infectious diseases continue to pose to human and farmed animal health.

This challenge arises from a complex interplay between social, cultural, ecological and biological factors and is exacerbated by our rapidly changing climate and increased urbanisation and globalisation. Understanding and addressing the challenge of infectious disease, including its prevention and management, requires a systems approach, able to map and interrogate the broad range of driving factors and the linkages between them. Such an approach benefits from the pooling of expertise and knowledge of sector specialists in inter-disciplinary teams.