Improving Brassica rapa for better nutrition – An interview with Dr Guillermina Mendiondo
December 7, 2020
Dr Guillermina Mendiondo is an Assistant Professor in Translational Crop Science at The University of Nottingham. She works on different plant species as part of her work on crop molecular genetics within the Future Food Beacon. The origins of the project In 2018, Dr Mendiondo travelled to South Africa and visited farmers in KwaZulu-Natal as …
Chasing auxin through the plant – international collaboration leads to Nature paper – by Anthony Bishopp
November 23, 2020
Photo (right) by Rita Astrovich on Unsplash Anthony Bishopp is a Royal Society University Research Fellow, Faculty of Science, University of Nottingham When Charles Darwin noticed that plants bend towards light, he performed a series of experiments showing that a mobile signal produced in the growing tip caused the plants to bend at the base. 160 years …
The real arsenate reductase stands up! – Is this the end of the HAC story?
November 19, 2020
Warning: this blog contains some hardcore plant science. Look away now if this is a bit much! This blog celebrates the publication in the Journal of Experimental Botany of a new paper about arsenate reductase in plants. Dr. Sina Fischer of the Future Food Beacon is the first author on the study and performed much of the work, assisted by a number of co-authors. including Dr Paulina Flis who leads Prof. Salt’s Ionomics Facility. Prof. David E. …
Computer Vision and plants – An interview with Bowen Deng
November 2, 2020
Bowen Deng is a PhD student on the Palaeobenchmarking Resilient Agricultural Systems (PalaeoRAS) project Why did you decide to do a PhD? What were you doing before? All my life, I have had a fascination with computing and technology. I have always enjoyed keeping pace with the latest advances in technology and have remained amazed at the speed of computerized developments over …
Crops for the future: the case of the winged bean – by Chong Yuet Tian
September 30, 2020
Future Food Beacon researchers in Malaysia and the UK are working with partners globally to utilise crop diversity to plug gaps in food production. We aim to address nutrition security challenges by making a diverse range of healthy food crops available and accessible to all. In addition to the flagship project on Bambara groundnut, Future …
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, …
Understanding oil crop sustainability: An interview with Dr Thomas Alcock
May 27, 2020
Dr Thomas Alcock is a postdoctoral researcher with the Future Food Beacon, researching oil crops and sustainability. Prior to this role, he held a Future Food Doctoral award, in which he worked on identifying the genetic basis of magnesium uptake in Brassica crops, with the hope of developing more nutritious vegetables. Here, he shares with …
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 …
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 …
