Profile

I am a theme leader at the John Innes Centre, the leading plant research institute in Europe and Professor at the University of East Anglia. My interests span from fundamental to applied plant science. I am particularly interested in cellular specialization in flowers (colour and cell shape) and how these traits are used by different plants for pollinator attraction.

Recently I have been co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and how crops can be fortified to improve diets and in developing genetic screens to identify crops which lack toxins that cause nutritional diseases, such as konzo.

I am Editor-in-Chief of The Plant Cell, through which I have been piloting new features in scientific publishing, including ‘Teaching Tools in Plant Biology’ and I am a co-author of the undergraduate-level text book: Plant Biology published by Garland Science (2009).

My aspiration is to develop foods which are nutritionally enhanced and supply adequate vitamins and phytonutrients to reduce the risk in all consumers of major chronic disease. Plant breeding is one way to achieve such improved varieties and GM is another method. In many examples GM is the only route for biofortification. My hope is that consumers will be able to appreciate the improvements that plant biotechnology (both GM and non-GM) can bring to their lives. GM is a technique that can be used to develop crops with real advantages for consumers, but currently such innovation, which is usually supported by public funding (because crops with consumer benefits are of little interest to agroindustries) has little opportunity for development into products because regulatory approval is too expensive and only multinationals can afford to get it.