The 2025 harvest at the John Innes Centre’s field trials and experimental farm was the earliest on recent record, befitting a pattern of extreme weather variation caused by climate change.

Over the last 12 years, the John Innes Centre has welcomed 35 Year in Industry students into our laboratories. The programme provides a great opportunity for undergraduate students to gain practical scientific experience and to work in a research environment.

July 2025 saw the latest Women in Wheat event, where twenty-five early career women researchers attended a training event at the John Innes Centre, focused on addressing gender bias in the UK and internationally.

Over 600 people have engaged with our bespoke e-learning platform so far, more than 170 people have participated in face-to-face Neurodiversity training across seven BBSRC institutes, and we've catalysed network development, policy conversations, and commercial interest from universities across the UK and beyond.

John Innes Centre researchers are collaborating with a new generation of bioinformaticians in South Africa. Their urgently needed skills are proving vital in protecting major crops against diseases and in understanding the country's remarkable biodiversity

We are passionate about inspiring the next generation of plant and microbial scientists and are proud to have hosted our first two T Level students in 2025.

June marks Pride Month, and Leah Milner-Campbell, Neurodiversity project officer, explores this as a time to celebrate authenticity, resilience, and the courage to live openly as our true selves.

May marks the beginning of Tourette Syndrome Awareness Month. It aims to destigmatise Tourette Syndrome (or Tourette’s) and increase public understanding of this often-misunderstood condition. As part of our ongoing Understanding, Valuing and Celebrating Neurodiversity Project, we're focussing on how research institutions can better support and harness the unique strengths of colleagues with Tourette Syndrome.

Parliament has now passed the secondary legislation to implement the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act for plants in England. It has taken years of hard work behind the scenes and a great number of people in our organisation, the Norwich Research Park Public Affairs Group, and beyond to encourage this change in legislation.