A RESEARCH centre to improve organic farming production is to be set up in the North-East, it was revealed yesterday.

Supermarket chain Tesco announced it is to fund research at Newcastle University over the next five years - thought to be the biggest such research programme in the world.

The project will also see huge tracts of farmland across the country set aside for the research.

Tesco, which is to give the university £500,000, says it hopes the North-East will become the world's leading centre for organic food production, and help revolutionise the UK farming industry.

Newcastle is already a leading centre for genetic research, which is being carried out at the Centre For Life, and could have implications for genetically-modified farming.

World expert in organic food production, Professor Carlo Leifert, is leading the research at Newcastle.

The team has been charged with finding new natural ways to combat the weeds, pests and diseases which conventional growers solve with chemicals.

Areas under study will include large-scale organic potato and carrot production, procedures to improve shelf life, disease management, and animal production and welfare.

Director of Tesco's organic produce, Peter Fry, said the research would help the UK become a world-beater.

He said: "Already, the studies carried out by our team of scientists at Newcastle University are bearing fruit.

"In addition, we have enlisted the help of some of our largest commercial growers to set aside substantial amounts of land to see how these new-found scientific principles of organic crop production will work in practice."

Last year, sales of organic products in the UK jumped by 60 per cent, and retailers believe there will be similar leaps in the years ahead.

The UK organic market is worth £460m, from virtually nothing five years ago.

Other areas of research will include crop breeding, organic fertilisation, and new technologies for soil sterilisation and composting.

Mr Fry said the new technology would be at the cutting edge of food production.

He said: "It mirrors a similar dedicated scientific approach which helped to create the huge boom in conventional food productivity in the years after the Second World War.

"Discovering the secrets of successful large-scale organic crop production is one of the most important goals facing British farming today."