̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Crop Science Centre

Celebrating Women in STEM

plc32 — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 11:33:15 +0000

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science , two of our academics speak about their research careers and how they ended up using their STEM interests to tackle climate change.

Scientists discover secret of virgin birth, and switch on the ability in female flies

jg533 — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 15:04:16 +0000

For the first time, scientists have managed to induce virgin birth in an animal that usually reproduces sexually: the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Once induced in this fruit fly, this ability is passed on through the generations: the offspring can reproduce either sexually if there are males around, or by virgin birth if there aren’t.

For most animals, reproduction is sexual - it involves a female’s egg being fertilised by a male’s sperm. Virgin birth, or ‘parthenogenesis’, is the process by which an egg develops into an embryo without fertilisation by sperm – a male is not needed.

̽��ֱ��offspring of a virgin birth are not exact clones of their mother but are genetically very similar, and are always female.

“We’re the first to show that you can engineer virgin births to happen in an animal – it was very exciting to see a virgin fly produce an embryo able to develop to adulthood, and then repeat the process,” said Dr Alexis Sperling, a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and first author of the paper.

She added: “In our genetically manipulated flies, the females waited to find a male for half their lives - about 40 days - but then gave up and proceeded to have a virgin birth.”

In the experiments, only 1-2% of the second generation of female flies with the ability for virgin birth produced offspring, and this occurred only when there were no male flies around. When males were available, the females mated and reproduced in the normal way.

Switching to a virgin birth can be a survival strategy: a one-off generation of virgin births can help to keep the species going.

̽��ֱ��study is published in the journal Current Biology.

To achieve their results, researchers first sequenced the genomes of two strains of another species of fruit fly, called Drosophila mercatorum. One strain needs males to reproduce, the other reproduces only through virgin birth. They identified the genes that were switched on, or switched off, when the flies were reproducing without fathers.

With the candidate genes for virgin birth ability identified in Drosophila mercatorum, the researchers altered what they thought were the corresponding genes in the model fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. It worked: Drosophila melanogaster suddenly acquired the ability for virgin birth.

̽��ֱ��research involved over 220,000 virgin fruit flies and took six years to complete.

Key to the discovery was the fact that this work was done in Drosophila melanogaster – the researchers say it would have been incredibly difficult in any other animal. This fly has been the ‘model organism’ for research in genetics for over 100 years and its genes are very well understood.

Sperling, who carried out this work in the Department of Genetics, has recently moved to Cambridge Crop Science Centre to work on crop pests and hopes to eventually investigate why virgin birth in insects may be becoming more common, particularly in pest species.

“If there’s continued selection pressure for virgin births in insect pests, which there seems to be, it will eventually lead to them reproducing only in this way. It could become a real problem for agriculture because females produce only females, so their ability to spread doubles,” said Sperling.

̽��ֱ��females of some egg-laying animals – including birds, lizards and snakes, can switch naturally to give birth without males. But virgin birth in animals that normally sexually reproduce is rare, often only observed in zoo animals, and usually happens when the female has been isolated for a long time and has little hope of finding a mate.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

Reference

Sperling, A L et al.: ‘A genetic basis for facultative parthenogenesis in Drosophila.’ Current Biology, July 2023. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.07.006

Scientists have pinpointed a genetic cause for virgin birth for the first time, and once switched on the ability is passed down through generations of females.

It was very exciting to see a virgin fly produce an embryo able to develop to adulthood

Alexis Sperling

Jose Casal and Peter Lawrence

Fruit fly, Drosophila mercatorum

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Cambridge-led consortium receives $35m to boost crop production sustainably in sub-Saharan Africa

cg605 — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 09:13:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��grant, from Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One), will enable researchers led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Crop Science Centre to engineer plants to take advantage of naturally occurring interactions with micro-organisms – fungi and bacteria – that help in the uptake of nutrients from the soil and air.

“African agriculture is at an inflection point, with vastly increasing demand at a time when supply is at risk, especially due to a changing climate,” said Giles Oldroyd, Director of the Crop Science Centre and Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science.

“ ̽��ֱ��outcomes of this work have the potential to see gains as great as those from the Green Revolution, but without relying on costly and polluting inorganic fertilisers.

“Increasing sustainable production of crops in small-holder farming systems, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, directly addresses some of the worst poverty on the planet.”

Nutrients are vital to the success of crops. However, the land of small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa is depleted of nutrients. Artificial fertilisers are too expensive for small-scale farmers to buy, and their livestock numbers too low to produce sufficient levels of manure to nourish their crops. This leads to deceasing yields overtime, which affects livelihoods. Average maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is less than a quarter of that in the USA.

Engineering Nutrient Symbioses in Agriculture (ENSA) research programme utilises natural symbioses between plants, soil fungi and bacteria, that deliver nutrients to the plant. By leveraging these relationships ENSA aims to engineer crops to make better use of nutrients already present in the air and the soil. This would allow sustainable increases in crop yields, potentially revolutionising smallholder farming in low-and-middle-income-countries, while providing a viable solution to sustainable and secure food production in high-income countries.

̽��ֱ��grant funds the ENSA research programme. ENSA is a Cambridge-led international collaboration with partners: ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, UK; NIAB, UK; Royal Holloway ̽��ֱ�� of London, UK; Aarhus ̽��ֱ��, Denmark; Wageningen ̽��ֱ�� and Research, ̽��ֱ��Netherlands; ̽��ֱ�� of Freiburg, Germany; ̽��ֱ�� of Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, France; ̽��ֱ�� of Illinois, USA; Pennsylvania State ̽��ֱ��, USA.

A not-for-profit subsidiary of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates Ag One was created to leverage global crop science to meet the needs of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It focuses on accelerating research that enhances the biological processes of six priority food crops: cassava, cowpea, maize, rice, sorghum, and soybean.

“ ̽��ֱ��pioneering work of ENSA is fundamental to levelling the playing field for smallholder farmers in Africa, leveraging the latest crop technology to ensure all communities have the chance to thrive,” said Joe Cornelius, CEO of Gates Ag One. “Breakthrough advances in crop science and innovation mean intractable challenges like nutrient uptake and soil health need not hold back agricultural development. We’re delighted that Gates Ag One can support ENSA to continue its work to meet the needs of smallholder farmers.”

A Cambridge-led consortium has received US$35m (£28m) over five years to develop sustainable solutions to increasing the yields of small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, without the need for costly and polluting inorganic fertilisers.

Increasing sustainable production of crops in small-holder farming systems, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, directly addresses some of the worst poverty on the planet.

Giles Oldroyd

̽��ֱ��Crop Science Centre

Checking the progress of an ENSA related field trial of barley in Cambridge

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Crop Science Centre to conduct field trials of genetically modified barley that could reduce need for synthetic fertilisers

jg533 — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 10:49:52 +0000

A field trial of genetically modified and gene-edited barley is due to be planted this April. ̽��ֱ��research is evaluating whether improved crop interactions with naturally occurring soil fungi promote more sustainable food production.

Scientists are hopeful that the results from the trial will demonstrate ways to reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers, which could have significant benefits for improving soil health while contributing to more sustainable and equitable approaches to food production.

̽��ֱ��trial is being conducted by researchers at the Crop Science Centre, an alliance between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the crop research organisation NIAB. It will evaluate whether improving crop interactions with naturally occurring soil fungi can help them more efficiently absorb water along with nitrogen and phosphorous from the soil. Nitrogen and phosphorous are two essential nutrients critical to crop production that are often provided through synthetic fertilisers.

While the use of synthetic fertilisers increases crop productivity, excessive applications in high and middle-income countries has caused environmental pollution that reduces biodiversity, as well as producing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, in low-income countries, fertilisers are often too expensive or unavailable to local farmers, which limits food production. That contributes to both hunger and poverty, because in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, most people depend on farming to support their families.

“Working with natural and beneficial microbial associations in plants has the potential to replace or greatly reduce the need for inorganic fertilisers, with significant benefits for improving soil health while contributing to more sustainable and equitable approaches to food production,” said Professor Giles Oldroyd, Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science, who is leading the work.

He added: “There is an urgent need for ecologically sound approaches to food production that can satisfy the demands of a growing global population while respecting limits on natural resources. We believe biotechnology can be a valuable tool for expanding the options available to farmers around the world.”

̽��ֱ��trial will evaluate a barley variety that has been genetically modified to boost expression levels of the NSP2 gene. This gene is naturally present in barley and boosting its expression enhances the crop’s existing capacity to engage with mycorrhizal fungi.

In addition, the trial will test varieties of barley that have been gene edited to suppress their interaction with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. This will allow scientists to better quantify how the microbes support plant development by assessing the full spectrum of interactions. They will measure yield and grain nutritional content in varieties with an enhanced capacity to engage the fungi and those in which it has been suppressed--while comparing both to the performance of a typical barley plant.

Professor Oldroyd said: “Barley has properties that make it an ideal crop for studying these interactions. ̽��ֱ��ultimate goal is to understand whether this same approach can be used to enhance the capacity of other food crops to interact with soil fungi in ways that boost productivity without the need for synthetic fertilisers."

̽��ֱ��trial will assess production under high and low phosphate conditions. It will also investigate additional potential benefits of the relationship with mycorrhizal fungi, such as protecting crops from pests and disease.

̽��ֱ��trial will follow the regulations that govern the planting of genetically modified crops in the UK, with oversight conducted by Defra and its Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE.) There will also be inspections during the trial, carried out by the Genetic Modification Inspectorate, which is part of the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency. ̽��ֱ��inspection reports will be publicly available.

More information about GM field trials

Trials will evaluate whether enhancing the natural capacity of crops to interact with common soil fungi can contribute to more sustainable, equitable food production.

Working with natural and beneficial microbial associations in plants has the potential to replace or greatly reduce the need for inorganic fertilisers

Giles Oldroyd

NIAB

Barley trial crop in field

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̽��ֱ��Royal Society announces election of new Fellows 2020

jg533 — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 17:53:50 +0000

Fellows are chosen for their outstanding contributions to scientific understanding. ̽��ֱ��62 newly elected Fellows embody the global nature of science, and are elected for life through a peer review process based on excellence in science. Past Fellows and Foreign Members include Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking.

̽��ֱ��Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and the Commonwealth. Its Foreign Members are drawn from the rest of the world. ̽��ֱ��Society’s fundamental purpose is to recognise, promote and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, said: “At this time of global crisis, the importance of scientific thinking, and the medicines, technologies and insights it delivers, has never been clearer. Our Fellows and Foreign Members are central to the mission of the Royal Society, to use science for the benefit of humanity.

"While election to the Fellowship is a recognition of exceptional individual contributions to the sciences, it is also a network of expertise that can be drawn on to address issues of societal, and global significance. This year’s Fellows and Foreign Members have helped shape the 21st century through their work at the cutting-edge of fields from human genomics, to climate science and machine learning.

"It gives me great pleasure to celebrate these achievements, and those yet to come, and welcome them into the ranks of the Royal Society.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge scientists announced today as Royal Society Fellows are:

Professor Kevin Brindle FMedSci, Department of Biochemistry and Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. His current research is focused on novel imaging methods for detecting cancer progression and to monitor early tumour responses to treatment, with an emphasis on translating these techniques to the clinic.

Professor Vikram Deshpande, Department of Engineering, for his seminal contributions in microstructural mechanics. His works include developing ‘metallic wood’, sheets of nickel as strong as titanium, but four-times lighter thanks to their plant-like nanoscale pores.

Professor Marian Holness, Department of Earth Sciences. She has created a new approach to decoding rock history, and concentrates on understanding the evolution of bodies of magma trapped in the crust, which ultimately controls the eruptive behaviour of any overlying volcano.

Professor Giles Oldroyd, Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science, Crop Science Centre and Group Leader, Sainsbury Laboratory. He is leading an international research programme attempting to achieve more equitable and sustainable agriculture through the enhanced use of beneficial microbial associations.

Professor Hugh Osborn, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for work in theoretical physics on quantum field theory and in particular conformal field theory.

Professor Didier Queloz, Cavendish Laboratory, for his part in the discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics last year. Hundreds more exoplanets have since been revealed by his pioneering observational techniques.

Dr Sarah Teichmann FMedSci, Director of Research, Cavendish Laboratory and Senior Research Fellow, Churchill College, for her contributions to computational biology and genomics, including her role in founding and leading the Human Cell Atlas international consortium to map all cell types in the human body.

Professor Stephen Young, Department of Engineering, for pioneering the statistical approach to language processing - namely, treating conversation as a reinforcement learning problem - that made the speech-recognition products in millions of homes a reality.

Professor Jack Thorne, Department of Pure Maths and Mathematical Statistics for multiple breakthroughs in diverse areas of algebraic number theory. At age 32, he becomes the youngest living member of the Fellowship.

In addition, Dr William Schafer at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, based at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, has been elected as a Fellow.

Nine Cambridge scientists are among the new Fellows announced today by the Royal Society.

At this time of global crisis, the importance of scientific thinking, and the medicines, technologies and insights it delivers, has never been clearer.

Venki Ramakrishnan

Wikimedia commons

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̽��ֱ��£2 billion vegetable and the agricultural future of the East

lw355 — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 11:00:01 +0000

From crop science to robotics, supply chains to economics, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� researchers are working with farmers and industry to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and profitability.

Major funding for new crop sciences research centre that will be ‘centrepiece’ of industrial collaboration

cjb250 — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 15:54:26 +0000

With the global population estimated to reach nine billion people by 2050, ensuring all people have access to sufficient food is one of this century’s greatest challenges.

Today, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) is announcing funding for the creation of a new Cambridge Centre for Crop Science (3CS) in collaboration with the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB). ̽��ֱ��new centre will provide a major boost to the ̽��ֱ��’s existing research initiatives around global food security.

With £16.9m from the HEFCE-managed UK Research Partnership Investment Fund as well as some £14.5m from the NIAB Trust, the 3CS will focus on impact: working with industrial partners to translate the ̽��ֱ��’s strong fundamental plant research into outputs for the farmer, processor and consumer.

“3CS innovations will generate new crops and new ways of growing crops for food, fuels, industrial feedstocks and pharmaceuticals,” said Professor Sir David Baulcombe, head of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and the project lead for the ̽��ֱ��.

“We envisage that new 3CS crop technologies will enable higher crop yields and lower environmental impact for crop-based food production – as well as contributing to improved dietary health.”

̽��ֱ��project leads say the 3CS will be uniquely well positioned to contribute to growth and innovation due to the partnership at its core: connecting the multidisciplinary research of the ̽��ֱ�� with NIAB’s pipeline to the end-users in farming and food industries.

“ ̽��ֱ��delivery of both public goods and economic growth is an essential agenda for today’s plant scientists, with the need to produce sufficient healthy nutritious food without harming the environment being at the top of the international agenda,” said NIAB’s CEO and Director Dr Tina Barsby.

“Creating the facilities to bring together NIAB and the ̽��ֱ�� in 3CS presents an extraordinary opportunity for impacting this agenda through the development of world-class science and translation.”

̽��ֱ��funding from HEFCE will allow the 3CS to be housed in a state-of-the-art research laboratory at NIAB’s Cambridge site, where it will be led by a newly-appointed Professor of Crop Science. ̽��ֱ��Centre will involve researchers from Plant Sciences and other ̽��ֱ�� departments, NIAB, the Cambridge Sainsbury Laboratory, and other UK and international research institutes.

3CS is already establishing connections with major industry partners, as well as agricultural supply chain networks such as the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Potato Growers Research Association.

In addition to the Cambridge Centre, the funding will also provide new field stations and offices at NIAB’s Histon site, as well as new glasshouses with full environmental controls.

̽��ֱ��Eastern region is a rich area for plant science, and benefits from the Agri-Tech East research and business network. 3CS will allow for closer collaboration with other regional institutes, including the John Innes Centre in Norwich and Rothamsted Research – both of whom have welcomed the establishment of the new centre.

Young researchers will be central to the success of 3CS, says Baulcombe, and the best will be recruited from around the world to be trained in interdisciplinary science, including the latest in plant genetics, bioinformatics, computational modelling and statistics.

Strong links with the agricultural industry through NIAB will mean that 3CS researchers will learn to understand how societal value and industry requirements feed into research design and translation.

While 3CS will make significant contributions to the main globally-traded crops such as wheat and rice, there will be a focus on advances in the genetics and agronomy of other UK crops, such as potato and legumes, and so-called ‘orphan crops’: those that lag behind in technological advances but are vital for smallholder farmers across the developing world.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the ̽��ֱ��’s Vice-Chancellor, said: “3CS will be unlike anywhere else in Europe because it connects a world-leading ̽��ֱ�� directly to growers, breeders and other sectors of industry associated with crops. ̽��ֱ��opportunity could be compared to the potential for advances in healthcare when a research-active medical school co-locates with a hospital and pharmaceutical company.

“ ̽��ֱ��3CS will be the centrepiece of what will be significant new collaborations, and an exemplar of what can be achieved by bringing together interested parties to focus on sustainable crop production – essential for food security, resilience to climate change, and the growing bio-economy.”

Over £30m has been announced for a new Cambridge Centre for Crop Science that will focus on linking with farming and food industries to translate research into real world impact.

3CS will be unlike anywhere else in Europe because it connects a world-leading ̽��ֱ�� directly to growers, breeders and other sectors of industry associated with crops

Leszek Borysiewicz

Carl Davies, CSIRO

Canola crop with wheat crop in background at Wallandbeen, NSW.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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