Plant and Crop Sciences

Plant and Crop Sciences is internationally acclaimed as a centre for fundamental and applied research underpinning our understanding of agriculture, food production and quality, and the natural environment. Our research is centred on important crop plants including wheat, rice, brassicas and tomato. In addition, fundamental research on developmental processes uses the model plant Arabidopsis. Plant and Crop Sciences hosts the Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) and plays a major part in the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB). We are located in the Plant Sciences building and South Laboratory Building at Sutton Bonington campus. We also have close research and teaching links with colleagues in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham's campus in Malaysia.

Researchers collaborate within five research strands

1. Fundamental research using model plants
2. Models to crops
3. Growing crops in a changing environment
4. Cereal crops
5. Fruit and vegetable crops

The benefits of using model systems, such as Arabidopsis,is that they provide insights into gene networks that govern important crop traits, such as root architecture. We are pioneering multidisciplinary and multiscale in silico approaches to produce predictive models of auxin regulated cell expansion, root gravitropism and three dimensional root architecture by algorithmic integration of in vivo and in agri experimental data.

Using model systems has also allowed the identification of key regulatory genes which facilitate the analysis of important agronomic traits such as seed germination, vegetative development, fruit ripening and reproductive biology, all of which are fundamental to global food security.

The analysis of physiological and genetic mechanisms controlling important crop yield and quality traits allows modelling approaches to identify crop ideotypes for a given environment. Tools and approaches generated in silico and in vivo are being applied within a crop physiology context.

We have many international links and collaborators worldwide, including the University of Nottingham in Malaysia, Fudan SJTU University in China, the International Rice research Institute in the Philipinnes and CIMMYT in Mexico. We also have strong links with industry.