Understanding plant microbe interactions
July 29, 2020
Dr Gabriel Castrillo is a Nottingham Research Fellow whose research focuses on the definition of the molecular mechanisms of plant-microbe interactions. He has won funding from The Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society and recently, a joint award from the BBSRC (UK) and the National Science Foundation (US) in collaboration with colleagues from the University of …
The Future Proteins Platform
June 24, 2020
Protein is an essential part of the human diet, providing an important building block for the body, as well as being used to build and repair tissue. As populations become increasingly wealthy, and urbanised, so the way they consume protein changes. Increased demand for meat, fish and dairy products is seen throughout the world as …
Changing commensality during the crisis: the Nottingham Social Eating Network and Covid-19
June 10, 2020
This post is written by Marsha Smith. The Nottingham Social Eating Network and its community food partners in the city mobilised to meet the rising demand for food aid support during the early stages of lockdown. In this post, I reflect on how the values of ‘social eating’ initiatives are being translated into emergent, localised …
A PhD placement with AB InBev in the USA
June 5, 2020
Jasmine Littler is a BBSRC-iCASE funded PhD candidate in the School of Biosciences. Her project is titled: Enhancing barley environmental stress tolerance through targeted mutagenesis. She is supervised by Dr Guillermina Mendiondo and co-supervised by Prof David Cook. As part of her PhD programme, Jasmine visited the AB InBev Barley Research Centre in Fort Collins, …
The Perfect Storm: Environmentally and Socially Unsustainable Seafood Supply Chains
May 19, 2020
This post is written by Lee Matthews, Lucy McCarthy and Anne Touboulic. Seafood supply chains sustain three billion people nutritionally and also provide 10% of the world’s population with employment, the vast majority of whom are small-scale fisher-people. Seafood provides access to safe protein for many of the world’s most economically marginalised people but these …
Mini-Traction Machine (MTM-2): Tribometer / Soft Contact Tribometer
May 12, 2020
We spoke to Dr Gleb Yakubov about the mini-traction machine (MTM-2): tribometer used in Food Science for experiments and research. Tell us about your research? What kind of things are you exploring? In my group, we are interested in linking molecular and structural features of polysaccharides (polymeric sugars) with their functionality in foods, plants, and …
Elizabeth David on food and belonging: Keeping house during a lockdown
May 5, 2020
This post is written by Dr Richard Vytniorgu, Impact Research Fellow in the School of Cultures, Languages, and Area Studies. The Challenge of Covid-19 For those of us who can, working from home has become the new normal, squeezing our entire lives into the four walls we call home. Inviting friends and family over for socialising …
UK Plant Health Week: A conversation with a plant pathologist
April 21, 2020
2020 is the International Year of Plant Health and April 20-27 is UK Plant Health Week. We spoke to Dr Rumiana Ray, a Crop Pathologist, about the importance of plant health, and what you can do to support keeping plants healthy. You are a specialist in crop pathology, what does that mean? Plant pathologists …
Global food supply chains in times of pandemic
April 7, 2020
This post is written by Anne Touboulic, Lee Matthews, and Lucy McCarthy The public health crisis unfolding before us is unprecedented, unimaginable and catastrophic. It will profoundly impact our values and lifestyles as it exposes the implications of national austerity measures on public services and the precariousness of our globalised production and consumption systems. Food supply chains …
Plants for future food security: the case of Bambara groundnut
March 23, 2020
Future Food Beacon researchers in Malaysia and UK are working with partners in Africa and Asia to help secure the future of our food supply. They are doing this by exploring the wider use of crop diversity to fill food production and nutrient gaps, making a diverse range of food crops available and accessible to …
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