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My work aims to improve crop performance under times of uncertain climatic and weather variability. It is centred in the whole plant stress physiology of fresh produce species including lettuce, Brassica and culinary herb crops, investigating abiotic stress tolerance, hydroponic culture, nutritional quality, leaf and rib quality disorders and growth modification using stress applications. Projects have included stress physiology assay design and population screening, quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of traits in vegetable mapping populations and molecular-based detection and survey of soil-borne pathogens of oilseed rape

My current research investigates the improvement of crop performance in environmentally stressful situations. This work forms part of the Vegetable Genetic Improvement Network (VeGIN) project, a Defra-funded collaboration between Harper Adams and Warwick Universities .

Current research projects

Climate change represents one of the greatest threats to the future of global agriculture and so to human nutrition. Together with increased weather variability, this is leading to both long- and short-term variation in crop growing conditions, which can cause a number of abiotic (environmental) crop stresses such as drought and waterlogging. Such stresses can be particular severe for crops during the transplantation stage when they are planted out in the field as seedlings.

I am exploring whole plant stress physiology in vegetable Brassicas, lettuce, carrot and onion, developing and using stress protocols in order to analyse the response of crop collections such as Diversity Fixed Foundation Sets (DFFSs) and Recombinant Inbred Line (RIL) mapping populations to temperature, salinity, drought, waterlogging and nutrient availability fluctuations. This will allow the identification of stress-resilient lines and resilience-associated Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) in order to provide useful genetic material for crop breeding programmes.

Previously, we have developed and used systems to screen vegetable Brassica populations and identified significant variation in abiotic stress resilience (Beacham et al., 2017). Resilient B. oleracea lines were found for multiple types of stress (drought, waterlogging, salinity, heat and freezing) in several different crop types, providing promising results for the breeding of stress resilience into different Brassica crops. Additionally, some lines were found to be resilient to more than one type of stress. Similar approaches have also been used in the VeGIN project to investigate nutrient deficiency in lettuce collections.

Beneficial crop lines highlighted in the study will then progress to breeding programmes with commercial partners in order to generate new crop varieties with improved resilience to environmental stress and better performance under variable weather conditions. In this way, we hope to help safeguard the future of production of these crops by increasing their environmental durability.

Current research interests

• Whole plant abiotic stress physiology of vegetable crops including Brassica, lettuce, carrot, onion and culinary herbs
• Development of plant resources for breeding programmes
• Vertical Farming systems
• DNA based detection of plant pathogens including soil-borne fungal pathogens of Brassicas

Current and recent research funding

• Rapid rooting vegetables for a challenging environment - molecular and physiological analysis of rapid rooting traits in lettuce - BBSRC MIBTP PhD CASE Studentship - Co-Supervisor
• Breeding for Climate Change Resilience in Brassicas – Discovering Novel Traits for Resilience to Stressful Growing Conditions - BBSRC MIBTP PhD Studentship - Co-Supervisor
• Priming Crop Defences Against Pests Using an Aphid Effector Delivery System - BBSRC MIBTP PhD Studentship - Director of Studies
• Understanding the Molecular and Physiological Basis of Tipburn in Lettuce (BBSRC Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network) - Principal Investigator
• Cultural Control of Aerial Oomycetes Through Manipulation of the Protected Environment in Propagation and Protected Production (The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) – Horticulture) - Principal Investigator
• Vegetable Genetic Improvement Network (VeGIN) - Investigation of resource use efficiency and environmental stress resilience in Brassica, lettuce, carrot and onion resources (Defra) - Co-Investigator
• Vegetable Genetic Improvement Network (VeGIN) – Investigation of abiotic stress tolerance in lettuce and Brassica Diversity Fixed Foundation Sets (Defra)
• Commercial lettuce tipburn trials for industrial partner - Co-Investigator
• Vegetable Genetic Improvement Network (VeGIN) -  development of abiotic stress protocols for analysis of lettuce and Brassica Diversity Fixed Foundation Sets (Defra) - Researcher
• Use of abiotic stress to improve shelf life in culinary herbs (The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) – Horticulture) - Researcher

Teaching Subject Areas

• Sustainable Crop Production
• Plant Physiology
• Plant Breeding
• Plant Pathology
• Academic Reading and Writing