Author Post Archive

Posts by Lexi Earl

PhenomUK

You have probably heard of plant genomes right? Scientists sequenced the wheat genome back in August of last year. The genome is the genetic structure of a plant and understanding the make-up of the genome gives scientists a map to understanding how the plant is formed and maintained. But have you heard of the phenome? …

Innovation Challenge: Reflections and Project Announcements

The focus of the Future Food Beacon is to find solutions to the twinned challenges of enough nutritious food for the planet under changing and increasingly testing conditions; and providing foods that reduce diseases of affluence, like diabetes and obesity. Our focus runs along two themes: agricultural resilience, and food for health and healthy ageing. We …

Meet the Beacon: Dr Sally Eldeghaidy

Sally Eldeghaidy is an Anne Mclaren Research Fellow in Sensory Science, and a member of the Future Food Beacon of Excellence. Sally uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to understand neural mechanisms involved in food intake, food choice and consumption. She focuses on understanding the sensory-brain-gut interactions in the regulation of food intake to tackle …

comments 1

CEPHaS: understanding soil water and its potentials for agriculture

Conservation agriculture (CA) is a set of practices which have been proposed to improve the resilience and sustainability of crop production, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where food security is endangered by the increasing frequency and intensity of drought seasons under climate change.  In CA, the structure of the soil is not disturbed by cultivation, …

no comments

An Interview with Dr David Gopaulchan, Visiting Research Fellow, Future Food Beacon

Dr David Gopaulchan is a postdoctoral researcher in the molecular lab at the Cocoa Research Centre, University of the West Indies. He recently completed four months as a Future Food Beacon Visiting Research Fellow, working with colleagues in Biosciences to sequence over 250 varieties of cocoa bean in order to establish if there are genes …

no comments

Meet the Beacon: Dr Rahul Bhosale

We are very excited to introduce Dr Rahul Bhosale. Rahul was a recent recipient of a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship, which he will be taking up in 2019. At present, Rahul is a Nottingham Research Fellow in Phenomics and Functional Genomics, and a member of the Future Food Beacon of Excellence. Rahul uses functional genomic approaches to …

no comments

Meet the Beacon: Associate Prof Levi Yant

Levi Yant is an Associate Professor in Life Sciences and a member of the Future Food Beacon of Excellence. His research is focused on wild plant populations to understand how evolution finds solutions to significant environment and physiological challenges. Dr Yant uses innovative population genomic approaches to identify changes specific to adapted populations. This reveals …

no comments

Meet the Beacon: Prof Murray Lark

Murray Lark is Professor of Environmetrics and a member of the Future Food Beacon. Prof Lark is interested in spatial statistical models and their application to problems in sampling and experimental design and the analysis of data from large surveys.   Much of his work is concerned with understanding constraints on crop performance with respect to …

no comments

Future Proteins: Is it all crickets?

This post is written by Prof Andy Salter and Dr Lexi Earl. In October, a paper by Springmann and colleagues appeared in Nature setting out a rather bleak picture of the impact of future food production on the planet (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0594-0).  They concluded that by 2050, without mitigation, expected changes in population and income levels would …

no comments

Anatomics in Pearl Millet

We are excited to announce funding from The Royal Society 2018 International Collaboration Award scheme for the project entitled: ‘Anatomics in Pearl Millet: Improving yield and drought tolerance of a major dietary staple food in the Sahel’. This 3 year research project builds on the trans-disciplinary expertise of teams co-led by Prof Malcolm Bennett at …

no comments