Staff

Graham's research is focused on understanding mechanisms that facilitate plant-environment interactions and increase crop resilience to climate change. These topics are approached using a combination of genetic and physiological tools, with a main focus on stomatal traits. Stomata are key gatekeepers for plant-environment interactions because they control gas-exchange at the leaf surface. They strongly contribute to water-use efficiency, photosynthetic processes, temperature regulation, hydraulic integrity, and organismal plasticity.

Gary provides agronomy advice and technical services to farmers across the eastern region, working closely with NIAB’s Head of Membership Technical Services Andrew Watson and agronomist Stephen Keach on-farm in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Research interests

Charles undertakes research and development of products, tools, and methods to enable more efficient and environmentally sound crop protection. He is interested in transferring technology and methods from other sectors into agriculture, utilising a range of scientific fields such as semio-chemistry, insect behaviour, image analysis (fluorescence, hyper/multi spectroscopy), remote sensing (aerial and ground), automation and precision agricultural technology to develop novel methods of crop protection.

Will is based in Somerset and manages NIAB Agronomy membership activities across the south-west alongside supporting our southern and western region agronomists.

Camila joined NIAB in 2016, working as a post-doc researcher across a range of ongoing research projects in the Cambridge Crop Research department. Her research focuses on the application of classical genetics studies, plant molecular genetics and genomics, including genetic mapping and genome wide association screens, to investigate the genetic control of disease resistance to stripe (yellow), leaf (brown) and stem (black) rust, yield, yield components, and quality traits in cereal crops, with particular focus on wheat and multi-founder advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) populations.

Based at NIAB East Malling Nada's research interests focus on the intersection between genetics and environment and the function that small non-coding RNAs and epigenetic mechanisms play in the information flow within the plant and between the plant and its surroundings. Small RNAs and mechanisms of epigenetic regulation are best known for their role in genome defence against transposons, but their functions in plants are vastly diverse and steadily increasing.

Nengi holds an MSc in molecular biology with biotechnology (Bangor University, Wales) and a PhD studying the ripening process of tropical mango (Mangifera indica L.) with a particular focus on the Rab GTPases (University of Nottingham).

Mitzi has been a project administrator at East Malling since March 2019, providing administrative support to the CTP PhD studentship programmes, both at East Malling and Cambridge.

She also provides general administrative support to other projects, such as the Rubus breeding programme, and at the East Malling site in general.