Read below about the projects we have supported and what they found:

Title: The foundations of a plant-soil interaction laboratory for ecological and agricultural sciences 

Investigator: Hannah Griffiths
Date: February 2022 Award: £37,066 
Summary: The funds awarded by BCAI were to purchase an elemental analyser to quantify C and N concentrations in plant and soil material. This is an essential instrument for the study of plant-soil interactions and has allowed me to start to build my lab's ability to independently carry out fundamental analyses on the ecological samples we collect, rather than rely on fitting in around other lab's activities. We will begin using the instrument to analyse field samples this year (2023) and expect resultant publications in 2024. Further I plan to begin using the analyser for 3rd year projects this year, so the instrument will contribute to teaching and training of more junior ecologists.

Title: Quantifying the trait variability underpinning leaf gas exchange

Investigator: Dr Martin De Kauwe
Date: February 2022 Awarded: £21,526
Summary: The BCAI matched funding facilitated the purchase of an LI-6800 Portable Photosynthesis System (LICOR) – a state-of-the-art instrument to measure leaf-scale photosynthesis. Data collected by the LICOR instrument underpins our understanding of how plants regulate their stomata to balance carbon gain against evaporative losses in response to environmental change.
This instrument will form a critical component of future photosynthesis research and teaching within the department.
Project outcomes: Due to global supply issues, the LICOR did not arrive until mid-January. Since then, the instrument has been used by MSc students to look at the impact of heat and water stress on Pea (Pisum sativum) yields.
Looking to the future, the LICOR is likely to be a part of proposed PhD to examine the impact of drought on Tea (Camellia sinensis) yields, a grant proposal to better characterise plant water relations in urban trees and a NERC grant to look at the impact of heat extremes on UK forest species.

Title: Support for the school's genome editing facility  

Investigator: Prof Keith Edwards
Date: February 2022 Awarded: £13,457 
Summary: Gene editing is revolutionising crop sciences. In 2018 BCAI recognised this by supporting Dr Lucy Hyde to establish a gene editing facility for wheat within the Life Sciences Building. This facility has to date:
1. Provided the Cereal Genomics Group with numerous (>25) transgenic wheat lines, saving the group over £100K in external transformation costs and speeding up its ability to generate transgenic plants.
2. Provided a core expertise to various members of Life Sciences in tissue culture techniques and the generation of gene edited plants.
3. Assisted researchers in the generation of preliminary data required to leverage further external funding, for instance the recently funded BBSRC Follow-on Fund to Keith Edwards, which relies directly on Lucy’s continued input.
Project outcomes: The additional support provided by BCAI enabled us to complete the Spo11-1 follow-on project, with two outcomes: a publication in the Plant Biotechnology Journal with Lucy Hyde as the 1st author (Hyde L, Osman K, Winfield M, Sanchez-Moran E, Higgins JD, Henderson IR, Sparks C, Franklin FCH, Edwards KJ. Identification, characterization, and rescue of CRISPR/Cas9 generated wheat SPO11-1 mutants. Plant Biotechnol J. 2023 Feb;21(2):405-418. doi: 10.1111/pbi.13961 and the generation of fertile Spo11-1-Cas9 fusion transgenes for further analysis.
It enabled us to initiate a conversation with the apple growers about establishing a facility of apple tissue culture and gene editing.
Supporting career development: BCAI funding enable Dr Lucy Hyde to successful complete her BBSRC Follow-on project and gain employment on another five-year award.

Title: Lady Emily Smyth MScR Studentships  ‘Identifying genes with the potential to reduce soil erosion’ 

Supervisor: Prof Claire Grierson 

Date of Award: October 2021 

Awarded: £24,884.89 

Summary: We wish to understand how plants help hold roots and soil together. This is important because crops have major effects on soil erosion rates and the fertility of land in cultivation. The selection and use of crop plants that are better able to hold soils together is a key goal of sustainable agriculture. 

Project outcomes: This studentship was a huge help to our research. Zoe's daily presence established strong experimental links between our research and that of Keith Edwards' wheat research group. Zoe's data enabled us to build a strong collaboration with Rothamsted that led to a joint SWBio DTP application. This was successful, with the recruitment of a PhD student, Emily Carr, who is now based in Bristol and continuing with the project. 

Title: Lady Emily Smyth MScR Studentships ‘Identifying genes with the potential to reduce soil erosion’  

Supervisor: Prof Claire Grierson

Date of Award: October 2021  

Awarded: £24,884.89

Summary: We wish to understand how plants help hold roots and soil together. This is important because crops have major effects on soil erosion rates and the fertility of land in cultivation. The selection and use of crop plants that are better able to hold soils together is a key goal of sustainable agriculture.  

Project outcomes: This studentship was a huge help to our research. Zoe's daily presence established strong experimental links between our research and that of Keith Edwards' wheat research group. Zoe's data enabled us to build a strong collaboration with Rothamsted that led to a joint SWBio DTP application. This was successful, with the recruitment of a PhD student, Emily Carr, who is now based in Bristol and continuing with the project.  

Title: Building moss transformation capacity in Biological Sciences 

Investigators: Dr Jill Harrison, Jim Fouracre and Yasuko Kamisugi
Date: October 2021 Award: £24,306
Summary: The identification of shared gene functions in distantly related land plants unlocks potential for wholescale knowledge transfer between species for engineering purposes. Model species such as moss are quicker and easier to grow and phenotype than many flowering plant models. Comparative approaches harnessing the benefits of both moss and flowering plant systems have significant potential for future efforts to engineer crop yield increases. This proposal aims to build moss transformation expertise and infrastructure in the School to support the careers of junior researchers undertaking comparative plant science and build resilience in the UK knowledge base.
Project outcomes:
• Generated tools- this project generated transgenic moss lines for projects on the evolution of PIN function and CLAVATA function.
• Provided training for early career researchers (two PhD students and a research fellow) in moss transgenesis. ‘Yasuko inspired my team members with her fantastic work ethic and incredible moss skills’ – Jill Harrison.
• Established new methods to generate and screen CRISPR lines and marker free reporter lines with high efficiency.

Title: Control of plant development by UV-B and temperature 

Investigator: Prof Keara (Kerry) Franklin
Date: June 2021 Awarded: £27,794
Summary: Light and temperature are two of the most important signals regulating plant development. Plant thermomorphogenesis (developmental adaptation to non-stressful changes in ambient temperature) is a rapidly expanding field in plant biology with direct applications to crop productivity, ecology and biodiversity management in a changing climate. Although interactions between red/blue photoreceptors and high temperature signalling pathways have been identified, the integration of UV-B and high temperature signalling remains poorly characterised. In sunlight-grown plants, leaf temperature increases concomitantly with UV-B absorption. In contrast to the situation in the field, the majority of plant science is carried out in glasshouses and growth cabinets, conditions in which plants are exposed to little or no UV-B. Understanding how UV-B and high temperature signals are integrated is therefore central to our understanding of plant development in natural environments. We have identified a novel molecular mechanism through which UV-B, perceived by the UVR8 photoreceptor, inhibits high temperature-induced stem elongation. This provides plants with an important braking mechanism in bright sunlight, preventing excessive stem growth which could lead to lodging and critical reductions in biomass. The proposed work will build on these findings to gain deeper molecular understanding of UV-B and temperature signal crosstalk. In particular, we wish to understand how UV-B regulates the abundance and activity of the transcription factors PIF4 and PIF7. Our results will have direct relevance to existing industrial collaborations aiming to reduce stem elongation in commercial horticulture, through UV-B supplementation.     
Project outcomes: This award has helped with the completion of three manuscripts and primed an early career fellowship. The first manuscript identifies molecular mechanisms by which UV-B maintains suppression of stem elongation in sunlight. This was submitted to The Plant Journal and returned with a request for additional experiments. The PDRA employed on this grant has completed these experiments and we have resubmitted the manuscript. The second identifies the mechanisms by which UV-B regulates a transcription factor, PIF7, to inhibit stem elongation at high temperature. Funding enabled a number of experiments to be completed and the manuscript is in preparation. Finally, this award enabled the funded PDRA (together with a PhD student in the lab) to establish a new research area on the light-mediated control of stomatal opening during seedling establishment. This project has produced some very exciting results which will be written up for a high impact publication. It has also primed a successful Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for the PDRA.

Title: Understanding the Interaction Between Introgressed DNA and the Wider Wheat Genome 

Investigators: Prof Keith Edwards and Dr Sacha Przewieslik-Allen
Date: June 2021 Awarded: £19,577
Summary: Introgressions from wheat relatives into the hexaploid bread wheat genome have become a central tool in the wheat breeder’s strategy. However, little is known about how introgression affects the host’s genome, both in terms of stability and functionality. Here, we intend to collaborate with Dr Hans-Wilhelm Nuetzmann, University of Bath, to investigate how the presence and position of the rye chromosome arm (IRS) introgression affects both its own expression profile and that of the host. We believe that by comparing the transcriptomes of wheat lines carrying the 1RS on different homoelogous chromosomes with lines missing the 1RS arm we will identify genes, both in the wheat genome and the introgressed rye genome, whose expression is influenced by the rye sequences. Mapping of these affected sequences will allow us to assess the extent of the interaction and the importance of relative location on gene expression.
Project outcomes:
This funding has enabled us to generate a comprehensive dataset which will form the bases of a future research proposal. We sequenced the transcriptome of various wheat lines carrying related but different rye introgressions on chromosome 1DS.
A successful collaboration was established to examine the chromatin structure of the wheat genome following the introgression of alien DNA and has resulted in the appointment of a joint DTP PhD student. The collaboration, between a senior researcher (at Bristol) and a Royal Society Fellow (at Bath) is an excellent example of how BCAI funding can be used to foster collaborations and knowledge exchange between GW4 universities.

Title:  Developing A FACS-based Method for Vesicle Isolation in Plants   

Investigators: Dr Alice Baillie and Dr Emily R Larson
Date: June 2021 Award: £40,114
Summary: Plant cells must manufacture and deliver a vast array of macromolecules to appropriate locations for biological functionality. Identifying the molecular mechanisms that control the delivery routes for proteins will enhance our understanding of fundamental plant cell biology and provide new opportunities to make agronomic improvements to plant development and growth. Specific subcellular vesicles have been isolated for proteomic analysis with known membrane proteins as targets, but there is currently no way to identify vesicles based on their protein cargoes. Such a technology would allow us to answer presently intractable questions about the cellular mechanisms regulating protein delivery pathways in plant cells. Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) has been successfully used to isolate vesicles from mammalian cells for analysis of their protein composition, but the same technique has yet to be applied in plant systems. We propose to develop a robust protocol for plant vesicle isolation by FACS that will be useful to researchers across plant cell biology disciplines.
Project outcomes:
• We have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to isolate specific populations of intracellular vesicles from plant cells using Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting. The data generated by flow cytometry can offer novel insights into the abundance and size distribution of vesicle populations of interest.
• Conference Presentation: We have presented our progress in developing this technique at two international conferences.
• Early career researchers: We are very grateful to BCAI for this rare opportunity to undertake independent research as early career researchers. We hope that the progress we have made during this project will help to support our future applications for independent funding awards, both in terms of demonstrating our capacity for independent project delivery and confirming the technical feasibility of novel types of experiment that we hope to undertake using our new method.

Title: Updating essential lab equipment in Life Sciences -multi-mode plate reader

Investigator:  Dr Lucia Primavesi  
Date:  June 2021  Awarded: £18,365  
Project Outcomes: Purchasing the multi-mode plate reader has formed a fantastic addition to the School's portfolio of research equipment. It has opened up avenues of enhanced experimental possibilities to a wide range of researchers, and it has revolutionised many people's way of working. It is a real asset to the department.  

Title: Maximising the potential of our plant growth area

Investigator:  Dr Lucia Primavesi  
Date:  June 2021  Awarded: £28,833 
Project outcomes: The purchase of this equipment (two growth cabinets and a spectrometer) has significantly enhanced our research in two ways. The new growth cabinets form part of the improvement and modernisation of Old Park Hill greenhouse facility and research zone. The additional purchase of the spectrometer has enabled our scientists to do very advanced light spectrum measurements. 

Title: Using a suppressor screen to define trafficking pathways that support polarised cell growth

Investigator: Dr Emily R Larson
Date: Feb 2021 Award: £4,184
Summary: The key players required for vesicle mobility and patterns of transport must be coordinated and regulated to support cell growth and development. How this coordination is maintained during polarized growth is an active area of investigation in a number of model organisms. The experiments aim to develop a research plan towards the identification and characterization of genes that function in the regulation and coordination of vesicle and endomembrane trafficking patterns required for polarized cell growth in the model plant system, Arabidopsis thaliana.
Project outcomes:
This funding allowed me to produce resources and data to be used for external grant applications. With the resources developed, I have been able to develop and supervise two MSc student projects, contributing to the educational excellence within the School of Life Sciences at Bristol.

Title: Characterisation of an ABCG transporter that affect root-substrate adhesion in plants

Investigators: Dr Emily R Larson and Bethany Eldridge
Date: February 2021 Awarded: £56,344
Summary: Plant roots alter their growth conditions through physical and biochemical interactions at the root-soil interface. We know that roots have major effects on soil erosion, but we know very little about the cellular mechanisms involved. This gap in understanding impedes our ability to increase crop productivity, reduce topsoil loss, manage land erosion, and improve plant breeding programs. Using a novel, centrifuge-based assay, we identified a mutant in the ABCG transporter family, ABCG43, that has enhanced root-substrate adhesion in Arabidopsis. We found that the adhesion phenotype of abcg43 mutants varies with gene copy number and we propose to complete ongoing molecular and cellular work, along with physiological and biochemical characterisation, to understand how ABCG transporter loss-of-function and overexpression shape root-environmental interactions and plant fitness.
Project outcomes:
The award assisted in completing a research project to develop a complete characterisation of an ABCG transporter in plants, to be submitted for publication. With this funding, we developed collaborations with other ECRs (Early Careers Researchers) at Bristol and the Earlham Institute. We also collaborated with bioinformaticians and biochemists at Rothamsted Research, further expanding our professional networks.
Support for Early Careers researchers: As ECRs, this funding provided scientific independence and experience that is otherwise difficult to obtain, and we appreciate the resources and support BCAI provides to ECRs within Biological Sciences at Bristol.

Title:  A Bristol Next Generation Wheat Breeders Array

Investigators: Prof Keith Edwards, Dr Sacha Przewieslik-Allen, Dr Gary Barker, Dr Amanda Burridge and Dr Mark Winfield
Date:  February 2021  Awarded: £20,386 
Summary: In 2012 the Cereal Functional Genomics Group worked with Affymetrix to develop the Wheat Breeders’ 35K Axiom Array. Since its development, this array has been the genotyping tool of choice for wheat academics and the breeding community, with users around the world. The array was developed using information available at that time, however, more recently, the availability of several hundred wheat genome sequences and the development of numerous haplotype maps, along with advanced bioinformatics tools, means that Bristol is now in a unique position to develop the Next Generation of the Wheat Breeders Array and, in doing so, ensure that Bristol remains at the forefront of wheat genomics and genetics. 
Project outcomes: 
New resources: Using the BCAI funds we have worked with ThermoFisher Scientific to redesign the 35K wheat Breeders array developing and delivering high throughput genotyping for the global wheat community. Access to highly flexible funds has enabled the Genomics group to maintain its position as one of the world leaders in high throughput wheat genotyping. Developing such technology has enabled the group to participate in numerous UK and global wheat projects and as such it has and continues to generate numerous high impact publications.  
Facilitating further funding: Partners in BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme: Delivering Sustainable Wheat (DSW) a five-year multi-institute program grant from BBSRC to develop sustainable wheat for the UK. 

Title: 100 important questions for plant science research – an international perspective

Investigators: Dr Helen Harper, Prof Claire S Grierson and Emily R Larson
Date:  February 2021 Awarded: £24,870
Summary: Funding from BCAI was used to employ, Dr Emily May Armstrong, to join an existing team (Emily Larson, Helen Harper and Claire Grierson) to assist with co-ordinating a high-profile collaborative project, between the New Phytologist Foundation and BCAI, to identify the most pressing research questions in the field of plant science.
The team gathered over 600 questions about plant science from the public, academia, farmers, policy makers and industry scientists from around the world. This study took care to achieve diversity and inclusivity and research institutes outside the Global North were contacted to contribute, and questions could be submitted in any of eight languages. Panels were selected that provided a balance of gender, experience and global geographical locations.  A team of 20 plant scientists from 15 nations were assembled to identify 100 of the most important questions. The initiative identified key research priorities, and highlights the importance of diversity, collaboration, and funding for plant research to tackle climate change, the biodiversity crisis and sustainable food production.
This inclusive study demonstrated how a global community of plant scientists, with a wide range of expertise, view the strategic priorities for plant research and offers insight into how an inclusive, international exercise can be used to identify diverse research questions. 
Project outcomes:
Public engagement:The 100 Questions in Plant Science project took part in Fascination of Plants Day virtual activities in 2021 & 2022 (www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2021/may/fascination-of-plants-day.html).  
Publications: This work resulted in two publications^{1 & 2} as well as being the subject of a Nature Plants Editorial (Food for thought. Nat. Plants 9, 675 (2023)https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01429-6) and covered by the international online periodical, Axios (Snyder, A. (2023) Plant science’s biggest problems. Axios. https://www.axios.com/2023/05/20/plant-problem-climate-change).
¹Larson, E.R., Armstrong, E.M., Harper, H., Knapp, S., Edwards, K.J., Grierson, D., Poppy, G., Chase, M.W., Jones, J.D.G., Bastow, R., Jellis, G., Barnes, S., Temple, P., Clarke, M., Oldroyd, G. and Grierson, C.S. (2023), One hundred important questions for plant science – reflecting on a decade of plant research. New Phytol, 238: 464-469. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18663
²Armstrong, E.M., Larson, E.R., Harper, H., Webb, C.R., Dohleman, F., Araya, Y., Meade, C., Feng, X., Mukoye, B., Levin, M.J., Lacombe, B., Bakirbas, A., Cardoso, A.A., Fleury, D., Gessler, A., Jaiswal, D., Onkokesung, N., Pathare, V.S., Phartyal, S.S., Sevanto, S.A., Wilson, I. and Grierson, C.S. (2023), One hundred important questions facing plant science: an international perspective. New Phytol, 238: 470-481. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18771
Supporting Early Careers researchers: ‘This project has kickstarted my career as an independent researcher and an interdisciplinary plant-focused postdoctoral researcher, allowing me to develop skills outside of a molecular biology laboratory environment. Equally, this project allowed me to hone international project management skills, promotion and communication skills, while building an incredible global network of collaborators. This award allowed me to work remotely, and to a suitable hybrid working pattern for my health. This allowed the 100PSQs project to run smoothly and reflexively, ensuring a high-impact outcome. This project allowed me to produce my first primary author publication, alongside a joint co-first author publication’.  Dr Emily May Armstrong

Title: Kpette robot for crop and pathogen genotyping  

Investigator: Dr Gary Barker 
Date:  January 2021  Awarded: £24,630 
Summary:  The UoB genomics facility, based in Biological Sciences, offers a range of sequencing and genotyping services to researchers from across the university and to a wide range of external customers.  Genotyping is performed on two platforms, Axiom (Thermo Fisher) arrays, and KASP (high throughput plate-based PCR genotyping).  Both technologies are of key importance to the Cereal genomics group in the school of Biological Sciences and underpin our role in multiple research programs. The Kpette robot received matched funding from the Faculty and was purchased within budget and successfully installed in the Genomics Facility.
Project outcomes:
Experiments: The robot has been used as planned to support the genotyping of crop species including Wheat, Barley, strawberry and Fava bean plus other species including Norway Spruce, Pine, Salmon, Trout, Chicken, Turkey and Bovine (cattle). In all cases, genotyping is used for marker assisted selection: a process which speeds up the development of novel varieties and cultivars and thus improves global food security. The robot has also been used to run Mouse, Human, & SARS-CoV-2 arrays for biomedical research applications. Increased sustainability:  We estimate that the use of the robot has enabled the Genomics Facility to reduce their use of plastic disposable tips by a total of 98,432 in its use to date which is a significant environmental benefit.  
Publications: 
1. Harper H, Burridge A, Winfield M, Finn A, Davidson A et al. Detecting SARS-CoV-2 variants with SNP genotyping. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0243185  
2. Wheat genotyping results were published in Nature communications:Desjardins, S.D., Simmonds, J., Guterman, I. et al. FANCM promotes class I interfering crossovers and suppresses class II non-interfering crossovers in wheat meiosis. Nat Commun 13, 3644 (2022).   

Title: BCAI funding to upgrade to LED lighting in GroDome 

Investigator: Tom Pitman
Date: October 2020 Awarded: £9,168
Project outcomes:
Supplementary lighting is essential for year-round production of plant material in the GroDome and greenhouses. Thanks to funding from BCAI, we have been able to replace all the lamps in the GroDome with white light LED’s, like those used in the Greenhouses. These 120w units provide excellent lighting output for improved plant growth, whist achieving excellent energy savings compared to the previous 184w units.

Title: Integrated Pest Management of Cowpea Weevils using innovative Neem applications 

Investigators: Dr Sinead English, Prof Richard Wall and Dr Kwasi Asante 
Date: June 2020  Awarded: £11,745
Summary: Synthetic pesticides are widely used to control crop pests, yet there is increasing concern over their environmental impact and prohibitive costs, particularly for farmers in resource-poor contexts. Botanical products, including neem Azadirachta indica, present a more sustainable and affordable alternative, yet more research is required to understand the best way to apply these products that maximises controlling crop pests while minimising impact on other beneficial insects. Here, we propose a project to develop neem as an effective pesticide to protect cowpea, Vigna unguiculata, an important, drought-resistant legume cultivated across Africa, Asia and the Americas. Our experiment provides an important first step to developing an enhanced neem solution that would benefit cowpea farmers and could also yield more general insights into developing botanical products for stored crops that target the pest species while minimising harm to other, beneficial insects.
Project outcomes: 
Established a collaboration with Heifer International. Supporting ECR career progression: Co-investigator, Dr Kwasi Asante has now successfully completed his PhD and returned to Ghana where he is currently contracted as an expert pest control officer to Kwidex, an agricultural investment organisation. He is a consultant for farmers who experience losses on their farms as a result of insect attacks. He travels to rural areas to educate farmers, identify insect pests and promote agricultural management practices.  

Title:  The regulation of plant stem cell function by CLAVATA 

Investigators: Dr Jill Harrison and Dr Zoe Nemec Venza
Date: June 2020  Awarded: £51,691  
Summary: Plant shape is determined by the activities of stem cells in their growing shoot and root tips. A core regulator of stem cell function has roles that are shared across a wide range of land plants, but mosses have far simpler tissue and genome organisations than flowering plants such as Arabidopsis. For this reason, we are using the moss Physcomitrella as a model to identify the basic requirements of plant stem cell function with a view to applying our findings to engineer yield increase in crops.
Project outcomes: 
Publication: Nemec-Venza, Z., Madden, C., Stewart, A., Liu, W., Novák, O., Pěnčík, A., Cuming, A.C., Kamisugi, Y. and Harrison, C.J. (2022), CLAVATA modulates auxin homeostasis and transport to regulate stem cell identity and plant shape in a moss. New Phytol, 234: 149-163.  https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17969
Supporting ECR career progression: Following on from this project, post doctoral researcher, Zoe Nemec Venza has attained a position at one of the top labs for plant development in the world (ENS-Lyon).   

Title: Building a remote sensing laboratory for plant and agricultural sciences at the University of Bristol

Investigator:  Tommaso Jucker  
Date:  March 2020 Awarded: £19,140
Summary: Increasing global food production without needing to devote more land to growing crops is arguably the biggest challenge of modern agriculture. Remote sensing technologies promise to play a big role in efforts to improve how efficiency we use agricultural lands, as they provide an entirely new way to monitor and manage crops at scale. As part of a broader effort to establish a new remote sensing research group within the School of Biological Sciences, this project will enable the purchase of a state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a wide range of applications for plant and agricultural sciences. In doing so it will help fill a research gap at the University of Bristol and provide new opportunities to secure funding and develop collaborations within the School of Biological Sciences and beyond.
Project outcomes:
This award enabled me to purchase a key piece of equipment for my research group - a UAV with capability to capture high resolution imagery over large areas. I have integrated this equipment into several existing projects within the group, including the research funded through a NERC IRF and multiple postgraduate research projects. This award has also allowed me to establish a collaboration with UoB's Flight Lab led by Dr. Tom Richardson, who has a wealth of experience in building and flying UAVs.  

Title: A pioneer study analysing nematode assemblages in a functional and profitable aquaponics system  

Investigators: Dr Rose Crichton and Christopher Cammies 
Date: March 2020  Awarded: £9,774
Summary: It is widely recognised by soil scientists and within commercial agriculture that nematodes provide important ecosystem services, and many nematode assemblages have been investigated to this effect. Working with the commercial aquaponics company BioAqua Farm this pioneer study will be the first to analyse nematode assemblages in aquaponics systems and will in turn shed light on the communities that govern and influence crop yields in these systems. 
Project outcomes: 
Nematodes perform important ecosystem services in soils and are well studied in traditional farming, but their role in newer soil-less food production systems is unstudied. We determined the nematode assemblages from substrates within the hydroponic media beds of a commercial aquaponics system. Commercial partnership with the nematology team at FERA.
Publication: Cammies, C., Prior, T., Lawson, R., Gilarte, P., & Crichton, R. (2023). An exploration of nematode assemblages in the hydroponic media beds of a commercial aquaponics system, Nematology (published online ahead of print 2023) doi:  https://doi.org/10.1163/15685411-bja10235  

Title: Assessing the diversity of UK apples with the Bristol set of single nucleotide Polymorphic markers 

Investigators: Prof Keith Edwards, Dr Gary Barker, Dr Helen Harper
Date: April 2019 Awarded: £14,660
Summary: Using previous funds from the Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation, we developed an efficient Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP)-based marker genotyping platform; SEQSNP. Using this platform, we genotyped a collection of 240 cider apples associated with Long Ashton Research Station. We have found that we are able to distil the original 1,500 markers used in the SEQSNP platform to just 31 markers, distributed across all seventeen chromosomes, which together, appear to be capable of discriminating between any two apple varieties. In this study, we aim to utilise these 31 markers to genotype the entire Brogdale collection (National Fruit Collection consisting of 2,040 accessions) together with the Welsh apple collection, to establish a core marker set for use in apple genotyping.
Project outcomes: 
New resources: Sampling and genotyping of the National Fruit tree collection at Brogdale and the Welsh apple collection was completed and resulted in developing a genotyping system and database – similar to human DNA fingerprinting – which can rapidly and easily identify apple varieties. The results of this work were published: Development of a minimal KASP marker panel for distinguishing genotypes in apple collections Winfield M, Burridge A, Ordidge M, Harper H, Wilkinson P, et al. (2020). PLOS ONE 15(11): e0242940.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242940
Collaborations:Developed a collaboration with Sandford Cider.  Outreach: We ran an outreach project calling on the public to send in leaf samples from apple trees of unknown varieties in order to identify them by genetic 'fingerprinting'. The public responded enthusiastically sending in more than 800 leaf samples. The group genotyped these samples and compared the results with a database of apple varieties. The results have been made available on a website for the public to discover what variety their apple trees are.

Title: Understanding & archiving the genetic diversity of Long Ashton Research Station cider apples

Investigators: Keith Edwards, Gary Barker, Dr Helen Harper
Date: July 2018 Awarded: New resources: We worked with the technology provider LGC to develop an efficient Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP)-based marker genotyping platform; SEQSNP. Using this platform, we genotyped a collection of 240 cider apples associated with Long Ashton Research Station, and we successfully rediscovered the parentage of a set of early maturing cider apples named the ‘Girls’. These varieties are highly popular with cider makers and have been planted over one million times in UK orchards. We developed a working collaboration with local industry Thatcher's cider and the wider apple research community. Our work clearly showed that Long Ashton Research Station made a significant and unique contribution to cider apple breeding.
Publication: The results of this work were published in the journal Plants, People & Planet: Harper, H, Winfield, MO, Copas, L, et al. The Long Ashton Legacy: Characterising United Kingdom West Country cider apples using a genotyping by targeted sequencing approach. Plants, People, Planet. 2020; 2: 167– 175. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10074
Outreach: Helen Harper organised and ran a full day interactive workshop for KS2 school children on the ‘Origins of the apple and plant breeding’.