Tim George

• April 2011-present: Rhizosphere Scientist, James Hutton Institute, UK.
• 2007-April 2011: Rhizosphere Scientist, SCRI, UK. Holder of Royal Society of Edinburgh Personal Fellowship
• 2004-2007: Marie Curie International Fellowship. CSIRO Plant Industry, Australia and SCRI, UK.
• 2001–2004: Post Doctoral Research Fellow. CSIRO Plant Industry, Australia.
• 1997–2000: PhD Soil Science. Department of Soil Science, University of Reading, UK and ICRAF, Kenya.
• 1993–1996: BSc Natural Resources (First Class, Honours). Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

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.