Next generation solutions for current generation problems: Enhancing mycorrhizal function in wheat
Dr Duncan Cameron of the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, The University of Sheffield will give this seminar entitled "Next generation solutions for current generation problems: Enhancing mycorrhizal function in wheat" at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee. He is an environmental physiologist and biological chemist; his work focuses on understanding symbioses between plants and soil microbes, particularly mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobacteria.
Abstract
In 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt said: "A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself". Indeed, all too often, we neglect the important role that soil and symbioses between different organisms that inhabit the soil, play in underpinning the success and stability of the food supply. Modern farming practices, such as ploughing and the application of chemicals and fertilisers have impaired the diversity and functioning of beneficial soil microbes agricultural soils, depriving plants of these essential symbioses. It is these organisms and the soil that they inhabit that my group is investigating, to understand the benefits that they provide to the crop plants that associate with them and how we can harness beneficial microbes to help us produce more food, more sustainably.
Biography
Duncan is the Director of the P3 Centre of Excellence for Translational Agri-Tech and holds a Royal Society University Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Sheffield where he leads an international group investigating the physiology and chemistry of plant-microbe interactions.
After receiving his BSc in Zoology and Botany from The University of Sheffield and his PhD in Plant and Soil Sciences from the University of Aberdeen, Duncan undertook post-doctoral research in Sheffield and at the Julius von Sachs Institute at the University of Wurzburg, Germany. Duncan previously held a NERC personal research fellowship in Physiological Ecology, also at Sheffield, prior to taking up his current position.
Duncan currently is subject editor of Plant and Soil, member of the editorial board of Food and Energy Security as well as a member of NERC’s peer review collage. In 2013, he chaired the Royal Society Frontiers of Science meeting, Beijing, China and in the same year received the World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist Award for is work in translating fundamental advances in plant science into practical agricultural solutions.
