Research and Development

Our projects range from detailed studies of plant, pathogen and insect biology through to replicated field trials for the evaluation of novel pesticides, biological control agents and new crop varieties. Our science expertise, together with a range of specialist facilities means we deliver world-class research and offer specialist services to a range of partners including breeding and agrochemical companies and growers. We engage fully in knowledge exchange with government, levy bodies and industry.

Crop Production Systems

Areas of expertise include crop physiology, agronomy, plant nutrition, environmental accounting (life cycle analysis, carbon and water footprints) environmental stewardship and pest, disease and weed control.
Our specialists work on protected and outdoor cropping systems, with an emphasis on cost effective production of high-quality crops with minimal environmental impact.

Pest Disease and Weed Control

We conduct detailed studies on the biology and ecology of key pathogen, insect and weed pests of outdoor and protected crops and identify ways to improve their control.
This underpins development of novel methods of pathogen detection, pest and disease forecasting and biological and cultural control methods that can be used as components of integrated pest and disease management programmes.

Plant and Crop Sciences

Expertise in genetics, cutting-edge genomics technologies and systems biology are applied to investigate; plant-pathogen and pest interactions, resource (water and fertiliser) use efficiency, flowering, oil quality, seed/seedling vigour and post-harvest quality.
Research is facilitated by strategic experimental resources including mapping populations, linkage maps, BAC libraries and diversity sets developed from international crop genetic resource collections, maintained in the Genetic Resources Unit.

For further information, please email cropcentre at warwick dot ac dot uk