English arable farmers are set to benefit from a £490,000 boost to training through a series of workshops and seminars with industry experts and top scientists.

This programme will be organised for farmers and growers in England and aimed at raising production efficiency and quality while cutting inputs and lowering costs.

The training for farmers will be delivered by bodies such as the Potato Council, the Horticultural Development Company and crop consultants ADAS.

A grant of £490,000 was made by the statutory Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) under Defra’s regional development programme for England, and with course attendees paying subsidised rates then total funding is brought up to £700,000.

This will pay for 25,000 hours of training for more than 2,000 farmers and growers up to March 2014 and the AHDB grant is jointly funded by Defra and the European Union.

It brings up to £2.2m for training secured by the AHDB in the current regional programme since the autumn of 2012.