Tim is a plant physiologist/soil scientist and has worked on rhizosphere processes for the last three decades.
Understanding how plants react to and alter their external environment is key to optimising their resource use, adaptation to stress and resilience and therefore the sustainability of agriculture and natural ecosystems. He is specifically interested in understanding the physiology of and genetic controls on plant responses to nutrient deficiency and drought. He has specific expertise in understanding how the external environment mitigates plant physiological and genetic responses to a lack of phosphorus in the rhizosphere. In addition, he is interested in how plants interact with the soil chemical, biological and physical environment to impact nutrient cycles. His recent research includes work on the ability of Bere barley to cope with extreme micronutrient deficiency, the role of root exuded enzymes and mycorrhizae in making organic P available and the impact of root hairs on the ability of barley to acquire soil resources.
The direction of his research is moving towards investigating the use of barley diversity for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The aim is to discover genes and traits to both optimize rhizosphere N and P cycles, promote C sequestration to soils and help adapt crops to abiotic stress associated with climate change. Understanding the rhizosphere processes involved in the N, P and C cycle and how these are affected by genotypic variation in root exudate composition will be key to managing both fertilizer use efficiency and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
The research of my team has produced a number of research highlights in the last 5 years:
Rhizosphere processes in utilisation of organic nutrients: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 have also demonstrated elegent interactions between plants, mycorrhizae and the hyphosphere microboime in allowing access to organis nutrients. 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 and drought 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 5 years I have supervised 10 Ph.D. students. I have been appointed as Marschner Editor for Plant and Soil, elected to the board of EPSO (European Plant Science Organisations) 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 70 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters.
2022-2027 EU Horizon Europe “Root2Res: Root phenotyping and genetic improvement for rotational crops resilient to environmental change”. Coordinator, Total value €6999998; Hutton €634431 ;
2021-2025 EU H2020 “ReAlising DynamIc vAlue chaiNs for underuTilised crops- RADIANT”. Co-I, Total value €5999715; Hutton £437998
2020-2022 EU Marie Curie Fellowship “Ancient genetics (AGENT): Capturing signatures of nutrient stress tolerance from extant landraces to unlock the production potential of marginal lands”. Co-I, Total Value €224934; Hutton €224934
2017-2022 EU H2020 “SolACE: Solutions improving agroecosystem & crop efficiency”. Co-I (Hutton Lead), Total value €5688000; Hutton €365000
2017-2019 Royal Society International Exchange Programme China “Contribution of Root Hairs, Mycorrhizae and Bacteria to Organic P Use by Crops”. PI, Total value £12000; Hutton £12000
2016-2019 EU ERC “Sensing soil processes for N bioavailability (SENSOILS)”. Co-I, Total value £1700000; Hutton £1700000
2014-2018 BBSRC-SARISA “Rhizosphere by design: breeding to select root traits that physically manipulate soil”. Co-I (Hutton Lead) Total value £1311256; Hutton £96651
2014- 2018 Danish Government “BUFFERTECH-Optimization of Ecosystem Services Provided by Buffer Strips Using Novel Technological Methods”. Co-I, Total value £1258872; Hutton £75000
2014-2017 BBSRC “Exploiting plant root exudation of organic acids and phytases to enhance plant utilisation of soil organic phosphorus”. PI, Total value £1250000; Hutton £626300
Links:
[1] https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3231-2159