Genome Diversity
Theme Leader: Professor Noel Ellis
Work in this Theme addresses the major challenge of the sustainable intensification of agriculture: enhancing production whilst reducing environmental impacts, particularly with respect to grassland dominated systems.
It carries out basic, strategic and applied research linking studies in plant genomics and bioinformatics with the genetic dissection of complex traits, population development and phenomics. A key feature is the characterisation and utilisation of diverse germplasm including crop wild relatives, interspecific and intergeneric hybridisation and polyploids.
The Theme has innovative, successful breeding programmes in grasses, clovers and oats which have major impacts on farm and a developing programme in the energy grass Miscanthus.
The success of the integration of these elements and the impact of the breeding programmes was recognised by the Queens Anniversary Prize for Higher Education in 2009.
Work in this Theme is organised into the following research areas:
- Public Good Plant Breeding
- Breeding Methodologies
- Plant Genome and Chromosome Biology
- Legume Biology
- Aquatic, Behavioural & Evolutionary Biology (ABEB)
