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genetics

August 8, 2022
Today marks International Beer Day, a global celebration of beer, taking place in pubs, breweries, and backyards all over the world. Behind great tasting beer is great science, like the barley research taking place at the James Hutton Institute...
June 6, 2022
The thin layer of soil surrounding plant roots, an interface that scientists define as the rhizosphere, is a habitat for a multitude of microorganisms collectively referred to as the rhizosphere microbiota. In analogy with the microbiota...
June 6, 2022
An international research team featuring the James Hutton Institute has shed further light on the evolution and biology of potato as a genetically complex global food crop. Most commercially grown potato varieties are tetraploids, which means...
May 5, 2022
By Prof Colin Campbell, Chief Executive, James Hutton Institute Last week in the Queen’s speech, it was announced that the UK Government would be bringing forward a new Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding Bill). Unless you work in the...
February 2, 2022
A renowned group of barley scientists, including researchers from the James Hutton Institute and the University of Dundee, has issued an open call to ‘galvanize’ the international barley research community from the ground up by...
October 10, 2021
An industry-wide consortium, led by producer organisation G’s Growers and supported by the James Hutton Institute, the University of Dundee and James Hutton Limited, has won a UKRI-BBSRC collaborative training partnership award (...
October 10, 2021
The next generation of barley researchers have received a multi-million investment through the Barley Industrial Training Network (BARIToNE) programme, a Collaborative Training Partnership (CTP) led by the Scotch Whisky Research Institute, the...
September 9, 2021
Bioinformaticians at the James Hutton Institute are supporting a 10-year, US$58m initiative launched by the Crop Trust and the Government of Norway to improve global food security and climate resilience. The newly announced BOLD (Biodiversity...
September 9, 2021
The James Hutton Institute has welcomed plans unveiled by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to pave the way to enable use of gene editing technologies in England. Gene editing can unlock benefits to nature, the...
August 8, 2021
Crop pathogens like Phytophthora infestans – the origin of several European potato famines in the 19th century - still cause US$300bn worth of damage to global crop production each year and continue to threaten world food security.
August 8, 2021
Speaking at Potatoes in Practice 2021, scientists of the James Hutton Institute have outlined plans for a Potato Innovation and Translation Hub: a centre of excellence to translate innovation and research into solutions for the potato industry...
June 6, 2021
International Barley Hub scientists have been awarded a prestigious International Partnership award from BBSRC to strengthen the link between world leading research teams in the UK and Europe. The aim of the grant is to create new working...
May 5, 2021
Plant scientists at the James Hutton Institute and the University of Dundee have won funding to establish a partnership with world-class researchers in Australia. This will allow the leading research organisations to pool their expertise towards...
April 4, 2021
The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers has presented its 2021 Matthew Mack Award to soft fruit scientist Dr Rex Brennan, an Honorary Associate of the James Hutton Institute. This triennial award is to recognise distinguished achievements in...
March 3, 2021
The International Barley Hub and the Advanced Plant Growth Centre, two flagship innovation projects supported through a transformational capital investment of £45m by the UK Government and £17m by the Scottish Government via the Tay...
March 3, 2021
The productivity of cereal crops could get a boost in the future thanks to the discovery of new roles for a master gene regulator that influences the development of barley florets, furthering the understanding of grain development including...
March 3, 2021
The James Hutton Institute has welcomed the publication of the new 10-year UK Plant Science Research Strategy. The document provides a framework for research and skills development to ensure UK plant science can play a strong role in solving...
February 2, 2021
Researchers at the James Hutton Institute and partner institutions are set to explore previously undiscovered mechanisms through which the pathogen responsible for late blight in potato, Phytophthora infestans, breaks through cell walls to infect...
February 2, 2021
The advantages of Flapjack, the James Hutton Institute’s multi-platform application providing interactive visualizations of high-throughput genotype data, were demonstrated at a recent workshop organised with the purpose of helping wheat...
February 2, 2021
The James Hutton Institute has announced the appointment of directors for three flagship research and innovation initiatives: the International Barley Hub (IBH) and the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC), both based in Dundee, and the...
January 1, 2021
Increased demand in berries across Europe meets the challenges brought on by climate change, environmental preservation and the need for new cultivation systems as well as high-quality produce. The new research project BreedingValue, a European...
January 1, 2021
The James Hutton Institute has welcomed plans unveiled by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to consult on gene editing, a technique which could unlock benefits to nature, the environment and help farmers with crops...
December 12, 2020
A scientific team featuring researchers of the James Hutton Institute and Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) has scooped the Innovation Award at the prestigious RSPB Nature of Scotland Awards 2020. Led by Royal Botanic Garden...
November 11, 2020
An international research team including scientists from the James Hutton Institute and the University of Dundee has reached a milestone on the way to unravelling the species-wide genetic diversity of domesticated barley. With the complete genome...
October 10, 2020
Scientists from the UK’s foremost agricultural research organisations, including the James Hutton Institute, have teamed up to create a new UK Crop Microbiome Cryobank (UK-CMCB) to safeguard future research and facilitate the sustainable...
September 9, 2020
International Barley Hub scientists at the James Hutton Institute, working with colleagues in the UK and Australia, have gained further insight into key genes responsible for grain composition, a process facilitated by using CRISPR gene editing...
August 8, 2020
A group of leading European academic research institutions including the James Hutton Institute have joined forces to launch the ADAPT (Accelerated Development of multiple-stress tolerAnt PoTato) project, which seeks to develop strategies to make...
August 8, 2020
The James Hutton Institute's bioinformatics group within the Department of Information and Computational Sciences has unveiled a new version of Germinate, the Institute's open-source, fully featured plant database infrastructure and...
August 8, 2020
The programme for Fruit for the Future 2020, the James Hutton Institute’s long-running soft fruit themed industry event, has been announced. Usually a well-attended physical gathering, this year FFF is going virtual with a week’s...
July 7, 2020
In recognition of the ongoing COVID-19 situation, Fruit for the Future – the James Hutton Institute’s long-running soft fruit themed event – is going virtual for 2020, with updates about new research and varieties delivered...
June 6, 2020
Potato is one of the world’s most important food crops, but the vulnerability of yield levels to plant stresses limit the crop’s uptake in some parts of the world, particularly in areas impacted by climate change. This reduces potato...
May 5, 2020
International Barley Hub scientists at the James Hutton Institute, working with colleagues in the UK, Australia and China, have identified a natural variation in a gene that influences sodium content in barley crops, a finding which may help...
February 2, 2020
Dr Isabelle Colas, a scientist of the International Barley Hub, has been awarded a New Investigator grant worth £400k by UK Research and Innovation to explore a genetic pathway to improved barley crops, with the ultimate aim of helping...
January 1, 2020
The Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) and Bulrush Horticulture Ltd are holding a joint Soft Fruit Information Day and Winter Meeting at the West Park Conference Centre in Dundee on 13 February 2020. The meeting is free to attend and open...
July 7, 2019
Potatoes have been a staple of Britain’s diet for half a millennium, but new research suggests that limited genetic differences in potato lineages has left British and American spuds vulnerable to the disease that caused the Irish potato...
May 5, 2019
Temperature has a pronounced effect on the formation of potato tubers: when temperature is too high, potato plants form less or no tubers, which can greatly decrease yields. Scientists at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen Nuremberg (...
March 3, 2019
Researchers at the James Hutton Institute and partner organisations are working to understand the mechanisms behind senescent sweetening, a problem responsible for considerable losses of potato crops during storage, particularly in the processing...
January 1, 2019
On Burns Night, let’s raise a dram to better barley: scientists based at the International Barley Hub in Dundee have developed a genotyping array that allows the detailed genetic characterisation of any individual barley variety. The array...
January 1, 2019
Potato tuber skin and flesh colours are attractive traits for consumers and frequently influence purchase choices. In a new study, scientists of the James Hutton Institute have identified a genetic molecule that regulates the production of ...
December 12, 2018
New gene combinations in barley could prove a budding success for breeders and brewers across the world, according to a new study by plant scientists of the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute. The study, published in New...
November 11, 2018
Scientists at the James Hutton Institute, in collaboration with colleagues of the University of Dundee, Huazhong Agricultural University, Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences (both China) and Wageningen University (Netherlands), have...
October 10, 2018
An improved technique for capturing DNA in crops may give plant breeders huge advantages when it comes to developing varieties that are more resilient to pests and diseases. The technique, known as diagnostic Resistance gene enrichment Sequencing...
September 9, 2018
Researchers from the James Hutton Institute and the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI) have completed a ten-month InnovateUK funded project resulting in the development of an improved genetic marker that can be used by barley breeders to...
August 8, 2018
Research at the James Hutton Institute has led to the discovery of genetic variations which can help protect potato crop yields at high temperature, potentially providing potato breeders with a valuable tool in their quest to create varieties...
July 7, 2018
Potato blight, caused by the water mould Phytophthora infestans, is the major disease of potatoes worldwide and is thus a threat to food security. New research from the Birch lab in the University of Dundee's Division of Plant Sciences,...
July 7, 2018
The use of barley genetic mutant resources to shed light into fundamental aspects of cereal biology was at the centre of discussions at the second International Barley Mutants Workshop 2018 (iBMW2018), held in Dundee with the attendance of 94...
June 6, 2018
Research by a group of scientists from the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute, along with partners from Glasgow and Durham universities, has found that a genetic process known as alternative splicing has a massive effect on the...
December 12, 2017
The Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) and Bulrush Horticulture Ltd are holding a joint Soft Fruit Information Day and Winter Meeting at the Inchture Hotel in Perthshire. The day is free and open to anyone in the soft fruit industry and...
October 10, 2017
Scientists from the International Barley Hub have discovered a genetic pathway to improved barley grain size and uniformity, a finding which may help breeders develop future varieties suited to the needs of growers and distillers.
August 8, 2017
Plans to establish a £3m partnership between China’s Xisen Potato Industry Group Co. Ltd and our commercial subsidiary James Hutton Limited were announced at this year’s Potatoes in Practice event. The collaboration seeks to...
August 8, 2017
A Blueberry Breeding Consortium including members from three European countries held its inaugural meeting at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee yesterday. The new consortium will fund a blueberry breeding programme which will deliver new and...
June 6, 2017
Potato is the third most important food crop in the world after rice and wheat; more than a billion people worldwide eat potato, and global crop production exceeds 300m tonnes each year. However, the crop is particularly vulnerable to increased...
May 5, 2017
Scientists from the International Barley Hub working in collaboration with brewing industry partners have unravelled the genetic secrets of Golden Promise, a popular malting barley variety in the 1970s and 1980s, in a drive to develop future...
April 4, 2017
An international scientific consortium has reported the first high-quality genome sequence of barley, a development which will assist crop breeders in developing more resilient barley varieties suited to the requirements of the brewing,...
March 3, 2017
The 2017 British Meiosis Meeting, co-organised by Dr Isabelle Colas (James Hutton Institute) and Dr Alexander Lorenz (University of Aberdeen), aims to gather UK researchers with interests in meiosis, with an emphasis on presentations by postdocs...
February 2, 2017
The Commonwealth Potato Collection (CPC), a unique repository of potato germplasm held in trust by the James Hutton Institute with support from the Scottish Government, has made the first-ever seed deposit by a UK institution into the Global Seed...
December 12, 2016
Scientists have developed an improved technique for capturing longer DNA fragments, doubling the size up to 7000 DNA bases that can be analysed for novel genes which provide plants with immunity to disease. By using the RenSeq method,...
December 12, 2016
The Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) is holding their Soft Fruit Winter Meeting at the James Hutton Institute, Invergowrie. The event is open to anyone in the soft fruit industry and other interested parties. Lunch and refreshments will...
July 7, 2016
Farmers, agronomists, representatives of the food and drink industry and scientists will come together next week (Thursday 14th July, 4.00 to 6.30pm) at the James Hutton Institute’s Dundee site to take part in Fruit for the Future, the...
March 3, 2016
Crop traits such as consistency, predictability and storability are highly desirable for the agricultural industry, and of particular importance to potato growers. However, do we understand the genetics behind the traits, and more importantly,...
December 12, 2015
The Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) and Bulrush Horticulture Ltd are holding a joint Soft Fruit Information Day and  Winter Meeting at the Inchture Hotel in Perthshire. The day is free and open to anyone in the soft fruit industry...
December 12, 2015
Use of a self‐compatible diploid potato for mutagenesis and forward genetic studies
December 12, 2015
Diverse climatic and geographical zones in Peru are home to a great variety of crops (e.g., potatoes, quinoa, asparagus, and coffee). Recent advances in genomics and biotechnology offer great potential to address biotic and abiotic challenges to...
August 8, 2015
Following the announcement made by the Scottish Government about a ban on growing genetically modified crops in Scotland, researchers at the James Hutton Institute have said at this year’s Potatoes in Practice event that biotechnology...
July 7, 2015
A James Hutton Institute and University of Dundee scientist has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant to undertake research on the fundamental mechanisms that underpin the inheritance of genetic characteristics...
February 2, 2015
We all think we have some idea of what ‘natural’ is, whether it’s the green meadows we pass by on the train or the fresh and colourful vegetables we pick out in the market. However, our countryside and the food we eat are the...
February 2, 2015
Plant diseases cost the world enough food to feed at least half a billion people, equivalent to 100 times the population of Scotland, every year. The interaction between plants, microbes and insects is a key battleground in the global fight for...
February 2, 2015
As the world’s fourth most important cereal crop and the UK’s second largest, grown on about half of Scotland’s arable land, barley is sure to get the attention of researchers, growers and industry. This time it also caught the...
February 2, 2015
An image taken by Dr Isabelle Colas, plant molecular geneticist at the Cell and Molecular Sciences Group of the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, has snapped one of the top prizes at a competition organised by the University of Dundee to mark the...
January 1, 2015
The Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) and HDC are holding a joint Information Day and Soft Fruit Winter Meeting at the James Hutton Institute, Dundee. The day is free and open to anyone in the soft fruit industry and other interested...
December 12, 2014
What is Ecogenomics?
June 6, 2014
Two researchers based at the James Hutton Institute have been recognised for their contribution to plant science. Professor Philip J. White has been listed by Thomson Reuters as one of 176 Highly Cited Researchers in Plant and Animal Science over...
May 5, 2014
Dr Attila Molnar of the University of Edinburgh, Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences will give this seminar entitled "Mobile silencing RNAs in plants" at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee. The seminar will be broadcast live to the...
April 4, 2014
What is splicing and alternative splicing?
April 4, 2014
Researchers at the James Hutton Institute and leading commercial breeding companies are working to improve the quality of winter barley for malting purposes, in a bid to address the concerns of maltsters, brewers and distillers about the long-...
March 3, 2014
Researchers at the James Hutton Institute and partner organisations are working to understand how seed potato becomes infected with Pectobacterium atrosepticum, the pathogen that causes blackleg; a disease that has been one of the most...
January 1, 2014
The Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) and Bulrush Horticulture Limited are holding a joint Information Day and Soft Fruit Winter Meeting at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, Dundee. The day is free and open to anyone in the soft fruit...
December 12, 2013
Northern reindeer populations are experiencing rapid and significant climate change; the success of future Christmases may depend on how well reindeer can adapt and Santa may need to look for alternative power sources for his sleigh.
October 10, 2013
The productivity of major crops such as barley could get a boost in the future thanks to discoveries in the inner workings of genes and how they influence crop development, a new study from the James Hutton Institute and the University of Dundee...
August 8, 2013

Imaging Technologies (Research Page)

The Imaging Technologies (ImTech) Group based at the Dundee site, within the Cell and Molecular Sciences group, is involved in a wide variety of research across the James Hutton Institute.
June 6, 2013
Scientists from the University of Dundee and the James Hutton Institute have unveiled a series of living displays explaining the role of genes and genetics at the University's Botanic Garden.
April 4, 2012

Cereal genetics (Research Page)

Barley is the fourth most important small-grained cereal crop, with worldwide annual production generally in the range of 130 to 150 million tonnes. Barley is, however, the dominant arable crop in Scotland, being grown on just under 300,000 ha...
November 11, 2011

Soil forensics (Research Page)

September 9, 2011
Cell and Molecular Sciences (CMS) is based at the Dundee site and comprises more than 90 plant scientists with research specialisms in cell and molecular biology, genomics, genetics, pathology and physiology. Crop improvement A major research...

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The James Hutton Research Institute is the result of the merger in April 2011 of MLURI and SCRI. This merger formed a new powerhouse for research into food, land use, and climate change.