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The world needs to produce more food, more sustainably, on a planet with scarce resources and under changing climate. The advancement of technologies, computing power and analytics offers the possibility that 'digitalisation of agriculture' can provide new solutions to these complex challenges. The role of science is to evidence and support the design and use of digital technologies to realise these beneficial outcomes and avoid unintended consequences. This requires consideration of data governance design to enable the benefits of digital agriculture to be shared equitably and how digital agriculture could change agricultural business models; that is, farm structures, the value chain and stakeholder roles, networks and power relations, and governance. We argue that this requires transdisciplinary research (at pace), including explicit consideration of the aforementioned socio-ethical issues, data governance and business models, alongside addressing technical issues, as we now have to simultaneously deal with multiple interacting outcomes in complex technical, social, economic and governance systems. The exciting prospect is that digitalisation of science can enable this new, and more effective, way of working. The question then becomes: how can we effectively accelerate this shift to a new way of working in agricultural science? As well as identifying key research areas, we suggest organisational changes will be required: new research business models, agile project management; new skills and capabilities; and collaborations with new partners to develop 'technology ecosystems'. © 2018 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

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S U M M A R YComparisons were made between 1988 and 1991 to evaluate three methods of estimating thc leaching of mineral nitrogen (N) from unstructured freely draining sandy loam and loamy sand soils. The studies compared the drainage patterns and quantities of N (almost cxclusively nitrate) leachcd from monolith lysimeters with those estimated from ceramic suction cups and soil core extracts. The latter two methods gave direct measurements of the mineral N concentrations in drainage, but required an estimate of the drainage volume calculated from meteorological observations and evapotranspiration equations to give total N leached. A bromide tracer was also used to confirm conclusions from nitrate leaching studies. There was a delay in the onset of drainage from free draining lysinieters because they lack the subsoil matric potential offield soils. However, total annual drainage measured by lysimctcrs or calculated from meteorological observations was similar, providing that return to field capacity was correctly identified in the field soil. During the first year thcrc wcrc discrepancies bctwccn methods which were attributcd to soil disturbance during lysimetcr and/or ceramic cup installation. In the second and third years of the experiment, estimates of N leaching losses using the Iysimeters and ceramic cups wcre in good agreement. Nitrate concentrations in soil solution at a depth of 130 cm measured from soil core extracts were smaller than found by the othcr methods during the second year and thc peak concentrations wcre significantly different ( P < 0.05). However, total overwinter N leached was not significantly different. Thus, while lysimeters and cups can be uscd to quantify leaching losses on unstructured, free draining soils if uscd corrcctly, the use ofsoil core extracts is questionable.

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