How do plant roots branch towards water?
February 27, 2020
Plant roots need to forage for water and nutrients in the soil. These key resources are not distributed equally through the soil so plants therefore have to send their roots towards the best available sources of water and nutrients. If plants couldn’t flexibly adapt to changing conditions in their environments, they would struggle to thrive …
The new agricultural bill: soils, sustainability and farming
February 4, 2020
It may have already left your news feed, but a few weeks ago a new agricultural bill was presented in parliament. We spoke to some of our local soil and plant scientists, Prof Sacha Mooney, President of the British Society of Soil Science, and Prof Malcolm Bennett, and Prof David Salt on what the new …
Giant Swamp Taro: plant for the future?
June 7, 2019
Giant Swamp Taro (Cyrtosperma merkusii) is an underutilised but highly productive plant native to the North Sulawesi region of Indonesia. It can grow up to 5 metres tall, and may produce tubers underground that are 2 metres in diameter and up to 3 metres in length. It grows in flooded, brackish conditions. This makes it an …
Global-local knowledge systems for innovation and entrepreneurship in the developing world: An international workshop in Nottingham, 2-3 May 2019
May 29, 2019
This post was written by Dr Bin Wu and Dr Peter Noy. About 2 billion people (two thirds of the population) in the developing world live on about 500 million small farms, defined as plots of land smaller than 2 hectares. Smallholder farmers are “knowledge-rich, but economically poor” and there is a significant gap in …
Meet the Beacon: Dr Michael Pound
March 14, 2019
Michael Pound is a Nottingham Research Fellow in Computer Vision and member of the Future Food Beacon of Excellence. Mike is a computer scientist whose research focuses on the development of novel computer vision techniques. Within the Beacon, he is working with bioscientists to apply these computer vision techniques to plant phenotyping, providing accurate measurement of …