Driving technological innovation from the cellular to field levels

Theme four enables us to further our capabilities by developing and applying new techniques and tools in bio-imaging and genome engineering to allow us to investigate plant growth from the cellular to the field level.

We’ve established efficient transformation and gene editing methods for wheat varieties, adapting the latest technologies for use with crop plants. We also maintain both wheat and oilseed rape populations with valuable mutations that can be used by the broader plant research community.

We’re using advanced image analysis for high throughput evaluation of plant traits in both controlled and field conditions to explore plant growth in collaboration with commercial growers and we are extending the reach of these capabilities by training both academic and industrial researchers.

Selected publications from ‘Driving technological innovation’

• Report on the conference; CRISPRing – A New Beginning for the Genetic Improvement of Plants and Microbes – Balazs et al. 2019
• Investigating the In Vitro Regeneration Potential of Commercial Cultivars of Brassica – Farooq et al. 2019
• Spatiotemporal coordination of cell division and growth during organ morphogenesis – Fox et al. 2018
• Overexpression of Two Upstream Phospholipid Signaling Genes Improves Cold Stress Response and Hypoxia Tolerance, but Leads to Developmental Abnormalities in Barley – Gierczik et al. 2019
• An efficient and reproducible Agrobacterium mediated transformation method for hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) – Hayta et al. 2019
• Impacts of the EU GMO regulatory framework for plant genome – Hundleby and Harwood 2018
• Shaping of a three-dimensional carnivorous trap through modulation of a planar growth mechanism – Lee et al. 2019
• A single-base change at a splice site in Wx-A1 caused incorrect RNA splicing and gene inactivation in a wheat EMS mutant line – Luo et al. 2019
• Morphometrics of complex cell shapes: Lobe Contribution Elliptic Fourier Analysis (LOCO-EFA) – Sanchez Corrales et al. 2018.
• DELLA genes restrict inflorescence meristem function independently of plant height – Serrano-Mislata et al. 2017
• Expression of the high molecular weight glutenin 1Ay gene from Triticum urartu in barley – Yang et al. 2019
• Mutation of the d-hordein gene by RNA-guided Cas9 targeted editing reducing the grain size and changing grain compositions in barley – Yang et al. 2019
• Leaf-GP: an open and automated software application for measuring growth phenotypes for arabidopsis and wheat – Zhou et al. 2017