News
See below for the latest news from the Warwick Crop Centre.
For our latest publications see Crop Centre in Print
Best student poster awards for PhD student Kathryn Hales
School of Life Sciences PhD student Kathryn Hayles, won both the John Colhoun Prize awarded for best student poster at the British Society for Plant Pathology Presidential Meeting 2015, and the best student poster award at the recent AHDB Studentship Conference, with her poster entitled 'Understanding the ecology and epidemiology of Pythium violae to enable disease management in carrot crops'.
Plant science collaboration with Brazil to improve vegetable crops
Plant science collaboration with Brazil to improve vegetable crops
Dr John Walsh
, Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences, and his collaborators have been awarded £15,000 for a research project on the characterisation of Potyviruses infecting vegetable crops in Brazil. The project was funded through the FAPESP SPRINT scheme (São Paulo Researchers in International Collaboration), which aims to encourage and promote the advancement of scientific research through partnerships between researchers in São Paulo State and overseas. The University of Warwick is one of only five UK institutions that has partnered with the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) to support this scheme.
Dr Walsh’s project will be carried out in collaboration with Prof Elliot Kitajima from the University of São Paulo’s Department of Plant Pathology and Nematology in Piracicaba and Dr Marcelo Eiras from the Instituto Biologico in São Paulo. Initial activities to develop this partnership were supported by the University of Warwick’s Brazil Partnership Fund in 2014. The Brazilian operation of the commercial seed company Sakata are also involved in the research programme.
Potyviruses cause significant losses in agricultural, pastoral, horticultural and ornamental crops. This project focusses on Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV), which causes diseases in the economically important brassica family of crops including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, turnip and oilseed rape. Through determining the diversity of TuMV and investigating broad-spectrum resistance to the virus the team is expecting to identify naturally occurring resistance genes which can then be introduced into commercial crop lines. The collaboration brings together complementary expertise in plant science research which will lead to significant synergies and knowledge exchange, but also has the potential to generate substantial societal and economic benefits through collaboration with industry and the resulting exploitation of intellectual property.
GARNish newsletter puts spotlight on plant science at Warwick
The latest GARNish newsletter highlights plant science in Life Sciences, profiling the work of our academics.
'Plant science research at the University of Warwick is characterised by the breadth of expertise - from fundamental molecular mechanisms to projects with direct application to industry. We have world-class basic science in signalling, gene regulation, development, plant– environment (microbes, virus, soil) interactions, and evolution through to pest management, crop genetics and genomics underpinning the development of new varieties.'
Read the newsletter (pdf)
New collaborative food systems learning programme funded by HEFCE
The University of Warwick is a partner in an exciting new initiative, the Innovative Food Systems Teaching and Learning (IFSTAL) programme, designed to improve post-graduate level knowledge and understanding of the food system. Through IFSTAL, students will be equipped with the knowledge, skills and opportunities needed for them to be more effective in the workplace. This will allow them to address the systemic failings in food systems which have resulted in about one billion people being hungry, two billion lacking sufficient nutrients, and over two billion overweight or obese.
With core funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), IFSTAL will bring together expertise and experience of faculty and students from five leading higher education institutions. Post-graduate students at these institutions, with an interest in ‘food systems’, will have the opportunity to participate and become part of the IFSTAL community.
Participating institutions are the University of Oxford (lead institution), City University-London, University of Reading, University of Warwick and the Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH, comprising researchers from the Royal Veterinary College, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the School of Oriental and African Studies).