Understanding how plants react to and alter their external environment is key to optimising their nutrition and therefore the sustainability of agriculture and natural ecosystems. I am specifically interested in understanding the physiology of and genetic controls on plant responses to P-deficiency and drought. I have specific expertise in understanding how the external environment mitigates plant physiological and genetic responses to a lack of phosphorus in the rhizosphere. In addition, I am interested in how plants interact with the soil chemical, biological and physical environment to impact nutrient cycles, specifically organic P turnover and nitrification. This work will help identify useful traits and cultivars for future agricultural environments which are more nutrient efficient so that agriculture can be managed at less nutrient replete levels reducing its impact on the wider environment.
My personal research and that of the group which I manage, has produced a number of research highlights in the last 5 years:
Exudation of phytase and citrate by plants:Demonstration that plants exuding phytase and citrate change rhizosphere biochemistry to the plants benefit and that interactions between plants with different traits is important. We are currently developing 2D techniques for assessing organic P dynamics in-situ and in the future will apply knowledge into designing tools which allow better management of the rhizosphere.
Root hairs and rhizosheaths: Demonstration that root hairs are critical to the ability of cereals to yield under P-deficient conditions and that their absence is not compensated by mycorrhizae. In addition, the presence of root hairs is implicit in the development of rhizosheaths. We know that the rhizosheath trait is highly heritable, making it a good target for breeding of improved cultivars of cereal crops for future agricultural environments. In the future we aim to identify the genetic control and evolutionary origin of this trait and understand the physiology of how root hairs generate rhizopsheres.
Using traditional landraces for sustainability: Demonstration that extant barley landraces selected over many generations on marginal soils have adapted to tolerate limited micronutrient availability. We show that Bere barley has unprecedented abilities to tolerate Mn deficiency and constitutes a valuable resource of untapped adaptive genetic variation. In the future we will use genetics approaches to identify useful cultivars and genes controlling the key adaptive traits to underpin crop improvement in marginal soils
In the last five years I have supervised 8 Ph.D. students and have hosted visiting scientists from China, Australia, Turkey and Denmark. I am section editor for Plant and Soil and have examined 10 PhD theses in five different countries. Also in the last 5 years, the group has attracted over £5m in grants to fund our research and have produced over 50 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters.