Hutton awarded £1 m from the Wolfson Foundation to support Phenotyping Centre The James Hutton Institute has been awarded £1 million by the Wolfson Foundation, for equipment to support a new Molecular Phenotyping Centre. The Foundation is an independent charity with a focus on research and education. Its aim is to support civil society by investing in excellent projects in science, health, heritage, humanities and the arts. Our researchers will use the phenotyping equipment to understand how different environmental conditions affect plants at the molecular level. This knowledge can then be used to inform crop-based solutions to sustainable food, energy and environmental security. Professor Colin Campbell, CEO, The James Hutton Institute said: “We are very grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for this funding, which will be used in setting up of the Hutton Molecular Phenotyping Centre at our site in Invergowrie. “Aligning with the funding we have received from the Tay Cities Deal, this new Centre with its state-of-the-art technology, will enable us to have unrivalled ability in creating, translating and applying science for the benefit of all.” Paul Ramsbottom, chief executive of the Wolfson Foundation said: “The James Hutton Institute is recognised as a global leader in crop science, with an impressive track record of innovations that have been widely adopted in plant breeding and agriculture. “It is a huge pleasure to be announcing Wolfson’s first ever grant to the Institute as they expand their much-needed research into sustainable food production, which will help to tackle the ugly challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.” In its latest round of awards, the Foundation has awarded over £19 million in grants to capital projects – buildings, refurbishments and equipment. Some of the other projects to be awarded funding include hospices and historic buildings, laboratories and a supported living accommodation, classrooms and a cathedral. Since it was established in 1955, some £1 billion (£2 billion in real terms) has been awarded by the Foundation to more than 12,000 projects throughout the UK, all on the basis of expert review. Hutton invests £1.75 m in hi-spec lab equipment The James Hutton institute has invested more than £1.75 million in new, state-of-the-art laboratory equipment to enhance its leading independent scientific research capabilities across food, plant and soil health and quality. The largest investment is in what is the only one of its kind Scotland, a combined ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHLC) and high-resolution mass spectrometer (MS). The high precision instrument, based at the independent research institute’s Invergowrie campus, near Dundee, allows scientists to perform extremely detailed analysis on individual plant and organic compounds faster and with far less manual work than its predecessor machine. A second machine, based at the institute’s Craigiebuckler campus in Aberdeen, is an advanced scanning electron microscope (SEM), which can image down to nanometre-scale – or a billionth of a meter – plant tissues and other materials. Dr William Allwood, metabolomics facility lead at The James Hutton Institute, says, the ThermoFisher UHLC Orbitrap IQ-X high resolution MS is the most powerful of its type currently available. It allows scientist to separate plant, fruit, vegetable or processed food extracts into their individual biochemical components. “With this system we can compare the content of health beneficial metabolites, such as vitamins and antioxidants, as well as flavour relevant compounds, such as those that provide bitter or sweet flavour,” he says. “That means we can compare the nutritional and flavour quality of fruits, cereal grains and vegetables that have been grown in different ways, we can assess the effects of storage and processing on foods and we can also assess the effects of different agricultural practices on the growing plants. The new Gemini 300 ZEISS SEM is sensitive enough to allow scientists to obtain high resolution images of parts of plants down to a nanometre scale. This means they can see, from observing the detailed structure of tissues and cells, how plants react to changes in their environment, from heat stress from climate change to the fertiliser they use, so that plants can be bred for future conditions. They can also look what minerals are present and where they are in plants to understand, for example, the nutritional value of its different parts. Scientists can also use this to observe interactions of microplastics with components of the soil. Additional investments by The James Hutton Institute include a carbon and nitrogen analyser, used for understanding the content of these elements in soils and plants, which can help to understand how much carbon is being stored in or lost from soil. February 2022 19 June 3
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