Andrew Taylor from Warwick Crop Centre is to give a keynote lecture entitled 'Pre-breeding Research to Support Sustainable Farming of Onion' at the 6th International Symposium on edible Alliaceae to be held from 21-24 May 2012 in ACROS FUKUOKA, Japan.

Two HDC-funded studentships are available on pests of horticultural brassica crops. Closing date for applications 31 May 2012.

A plant disease normally found in subarctic climates has been identified for the first time in the UK in buttercups as far south as Herefordshire. Sclerotinia subarctica, a fungus known to affect both crops and wild plants, has also been found in carrots and meadow buttercups in Perthshire by plant scientists at the Warwick Crop Centre in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick. It is closely related to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum which commonly causes disease in crop plants such as lettuce, carrot and oilseed rape. In carrots, both fungi infect the foliage and can travel down the leaves and invade the crown of the carrot, causing them to rot in the ground or in store once they have been harvested.