About me

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biology at Bristol University, after which I worked for Syngenta, developing their hybrid wheat programme. Following this, I worked as a technician at the Sainsbury laboratory in Cambridge helping to investigate the genetic basic behind the plasticity of plant growth habits. During this time, I decided I wanted to do a PhD.
I was interested in this project as I had a lot of experience working with plants and also wanted to work on a project that would have direct impact in the agricultural business.

My project

Potassium (K) is essential for plant growth and health, playing a part in a vast array of activities within the plant. Plants require large amounts of cellular K and deficiencies in K nutrition cause serious issues regarding plant growth and crop yield. Due to its high mobility, potassium use efficiency is often as low as 50% and together with inadequate and imbalanced fertiliser regimes, is leading to further declines in soil fertility in many parts of the world. Globally, soil K depletion is an increasing problem and to restore K soil fertility would require a large increase in the world’s K fertiliser production. It is therefore important to characterise alternative K sources. Polyhalite (K2SO4.MgSO4.2CaSO4.2H2O) is a hydrated evaporate mineral which can be used directly as a potassium fertiliser. However, there has been limited work on the suitability and efficacy of polyhalite in comparison to traditionally used K fertilisers.

Rice is a staple crop for half the world’s population and is grown extensively across the globe. Due to the importance rice plays in feeding the world’s population, it is being used to help determine the effectiveness of polyhalite as a fertiliser.

My project aims to determine polyhalite’s suitability as a K fertiliser by observing carefully controlled pot and hydroponics growth experiments using different K fertilisers and measuring plant nutrient uptake and distribution to determine if these traits are affected by different K sources. In addition, cultivars with high and low potassium use efficiency (KUE) will be grown to determine if different K fertilisers impact KUE. Furthermore, microbial communities in the plant rhizosphere will be measured for taxonomic and functional diversity to determine how they may be affected by different K fertilisers.

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