Prof John Doonan

BSc Hons (Leeds), PhD (Leeds)

Prof John Doonan

Chair (DLM)

IBERS

Contact Details

Profile

John Doonan has more than 30 years experience in genetics and developmental cell biology of plants and fungi. Before joining IBERS as Director of the National Plant Phenomics Centre, he was Group Leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Previous to that he worked at the Robert Wood Johnston Medical School in New Jersey, USA and obtained his PhD from Leeds University.

Teaching

Module Coordinator
Lecturer
Tutor
Coordinator
Grader

Research

Plant growth underpins the productivity of both natural and agricultural ecosystems. Our group uses both induced (mutants) and natural variation in experimental model systems and wheat to understand how plants grow and respond to their environment. Current research focuses on cyclin-dependent protein kinase targets (a) in the microtubule system and (b) in the protein translation machinery. We are developing high throughput high content phenotyping technologies at the National Plant Phenomics Centre for crops and model plants grown in either controlled environments and the field.  Collaborations with computer scientists, both locally within Aberystwyth and globally, aim to develop and exploit emerging data acquisition technologies and image interrogation methods based on Artificial Intelligence to provide new knowledge on the basis of productivity in natural and agricultural ecosystems.  

Our lab welcomes visiting students, post-doc, and academics on short and longer-term training visits. Please contact us by email.

Research is or has been supported by grants from the BBSRC, Leverhulme, Interreg Funds, Horizon2020, NSF, FP7, BEAA, and the Welsh Government.

Research Groups

Publications

Reena, R, Doonan, JH, Williams, K, Corke, FMK, Zhang, H & Liu, Y 2025, Uncertainty and Feature-Based Weighted Loss for 3D Wheat Part Segmentation. in Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications. vol. 2, Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, Science and Technology Publications, pp. 632-641, 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, VISIGRAPP 2025, Porto, Portugal, 26 Feb 2025. 10.5220/0013312300003912
Reena, , Doonan, JH, Zhang, H, Liu, Y, Williams, K & Corke, FMK 2025, Uncertainty Driven Sampling to Handle Intra-class Imbalance Part Segmentation in Wheat. in 6th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Applications and Systems, IPAS 2025 - Proceedings. 6th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Applications and Systems, IPAS 2025 - Proceedings, IEEE Press, 6th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Applications and Systems, IPAS 2025, Lyon, France, 09 Jan 2025. 10.1109/IPAS63548.2025.10924512
Girija, A, Canales, F, Haddadi, BS, Dye, R, Corke, F, Brook, J, Williams, K, Philips, H, Beckman, M, Han, J, Prats, E, Doonan, JH & Mur, LAJ 2024 'Metabolomic approaches suggests two mechanisms of drought response post anthesis in Mediterranean oat (Avena sativa L.) cultivars' Authorea. 10.22541/au.172959354.47755276/v1
van de Koot, WQM, Msonda, J, Olver, OP, Doonan, JH & Nibau, C 2024, 'Variation in Water-Holding Capacity in Sphagnum Species Depends on Both Plant and Colony Structure', Plants, vol. 13, no. 8, 1061. 10.3390/plants13081061
Yang, W, Doonan, JH, Guo, X, Yuan, X & Ling, F 2023, 'State-of-the-art technology and applications in crop phenomics, volume II', Frontiers in Plant Science, vol. 14, 1195377. 10.3389/fpls.2023.1195377
More publications on the Research Portal