• Understanding how changes in agriculture impact on the performance of crop plants, as well as the impact of the management on soils is key to developing more sustainable farming practices in terms of crop yield, long-term soils sustainability and farm income sustainability.
• Research includes:
o Mechanistic understanding of the individual root elongations
o Phenotyping of root traits including root architecture
o Mechanistic understanding of root interactions with soil structure
o Understanding impact of crop management (e.g. soil tillage and crop rotations) on soil and root:soil interactions
o High resolution and multispectral imaging and image analysis
o Whole plant phenotyping and
o Impact of soil restrictions on plant performance and ecosystem impacts
o Impact of crop cultivar variation on root:soil interactions.
o Utilisation of confocal microscopy and computer vision techniques to develop tools for measuring cell expansion, seed biology and root elongation.
Past research
Movement, replication and suppression of Tobacco mosaic virus and Tobacco rattle virus in tobacco and Arabidopsis. Utilisation of Tobacco rattle virus as a vector for inducing gene silencing of endogenous root development genes (Mylnefield Research Services).
Growth and development effects of cell wall carbohydrates (University College London)