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The threat of a no-deal Brexit is causing staff at several universities in the UK to stockpile scientific equipment, including protective gloves and fly food, �鶹��ý has learned. Researchers say they want to ensure their experiments can continue should imports of materials be disrupted after the UK’s planned exit from the European Union on 31 October.

at Imperial College London says he and his colleagues have collected extra stores of the ingredients needed to make food for the thousands of fruit flies he uses in his experiments.

“The yeast is produced in France and travels via Belgium. The agar is imported from Japan. Polenta comes from Italy and fructose from Belgium,” he says. “The last thing one may want is to lose precious genetic stocks because lab food is not coming through. We can’t really stockpile much more than this, partly because it would be too expensive.”

, also at Imperial, keeps 1000 zebrafish in her lab. She says that food and equipment needed to maintain the health of her aquariums comes from “all around the EU”. She says she is stockpiling to ensure that she can uphold animal welfare.

Neil Hyatt at the University of Sheffield, who researches radioactive waste management, has ordered an advance supply of the radioactive compound uranium dioxide. “We have taken measures to procure sufficient material to deliver our current research order book,” he says.

One researcher says they have even been prompted to check that they have enough robots for classes on artificial intelligence.

Others are so worried about a supply shortage that they declined to say what, exactly, they are stockpiling.

“We are indeed gathering together a few specific items that we know can be hard to come by or are critical for our plans over the next couple of months,” says , who works on treatments for leukaemia at University College London. Fielding didn’t want to name the items in question, because she was worried about sparking a run on them. She says she only knows of one supplier for the items.

A UCL spokesperson says the university has been in touch with manufacturers to discuss the potential effects of Brexit.

“We have also encouraged individual faculties, departments and labs to take some proportionate responses themselves,” says the spokesperson. “UCL’s Estates teams have been working with academic departments and labs to ascertain any additional storage needs in relation to this.”

Some universities say they are not engaged in “widespread” stockpiling. “We do not anticipate that large-scale stockpiling will be necessary,” says a spokesperson for the University of Bath.

However, a copy of an email sent to some academics at Bath has been shared with �鶹��ý. For researchers relying on small, EU-based suppliers, the first piece of advice reads: “Stockpile if you can”.

In total, �鶹��ý received responses on the issue of stockpiling from nearly 30 academic staff and universities. Roughly 40 per cent of respondents confirmed some level of stockpiling.

Clearly, not everyone has decided to take such measures. , a microbiologist at the University of Birmingham, says he thinks the chances of a no-deal Brexit have fallen because a bill seeking in parliament.

The confusion over when Brexit will happen, and in what form, has led to sporadic stockpiling efforts at some institutions this year.

at the University of Bristol grows red blood cells in his lab to research human diseases. His lab first stockpiled certain materials prior to the previous Brexit deadline of 29 March.

“Last time we miscalculated and bought too many protective gloves, the boxes were everywhere,” he says.

Other supplies stored up at the time have since been used, so Toye’s team is now stockpiling them again. This includes growth media and plastic containers, which, he says, take up a lot of space: “We have bought hundreds of bottles.”