Resources and Capabilities
Crop and Plant Growing Capability
The NIAB plant trialling infrastructure spans UK environments and is unique in its breadth of geographic coverage in England and Wales, the degree of integration with other NIAB capabilities and in some of the specialist facilities. It consists of about 500 hectares of NIAB owned or contracted land at our HQ and Noon Folly Farm in Cambridge and 7 Regional Trial Centres available for field experimentation. Trials facilities at NIAB HQ include extensive outdoor standing areas for specialist ornamentals work, for example hanging basket trials and disease work, for example potato cyst nematode trials.
Staff expertise in plant growth and maintenance extends to over 130 agricultural, horticultural and non-food plant and crop species and includes specialist capability such as GM trials. The facilities are supported with various specialist agricultural equipment associated with for example sugar beet harvesting and grass trials management.
The capability is associated with custodianship of historical datasets of importance. For example, the national crop evaluation dataset is unique and irreplaceable and the historic data remains of interest in relation to research relevant to contemporary challenges such as climate change and environmental impact reduction. Likewise, the UK Cereal Pathogen Virulence Survey dataset have the potential to provide unique insights into pathogen population dynamics in the farmed environment in the UK going back more than 40 years the significance of which is likely to have an international dimension. The specialist statistical and IT knowledge to access, interrogate, analyse and exploit this type of data in a research context is embedded within the capability.
NIAB operations have access to 2200m2 of general and specialist glasshouses which include all-year round, spore-proof and isolation facilities.
Its plant growing facilities are supported by a further 7400m2 of buildings, glasshouse headers, laboratories, delivery areas, specialist photographic rooms, chemical stores, seed stores, seed handling areas and offices for research and sample handling in support of our operations.
Plant Characterisation Capability
NIAB’s plant characterisation capability is based upon long-established phenotyping skills, datasets and biological resources, backed up with appropriate facilities for data management, laboratory work and field trials across a wide range of agricultural and ornamental species. The capability applies scientifically sound approaches to the high throughput, standardised characterisation of the agricultural and ornamental plant genetic resources utilised by the food and farming industries in the UK and in some instances across Europe.
The capability makes critical knowledge contributions to national and European systems involved in the protection of plant breeders intellectual property rights and seed certification systems. It has 
been instrumental in the streamlining of systems in line with industry need, and remains at the forefront in the design, execution and analysis of systems of plant characterisation across a range of arable, horticultural, ornamental and livestock crops for food, feed, horticultural and non-food crop utilisation.
Central to the capability is a unique knowledge interaction network with national and international policy-makers and commercial players in the food and farming industries. The network incorporates UK government, supra-governmental organisations (e.g. UPOV, ISTA, OECD, CPVO), major multinational companies through to individual clients in the farming and food industries and research projects. There is no other independent UK organisation that maintains a similar breadth of contact at a technical level on behalf of the UK food and framing industry.
The unique and extensive plant phenotyping skills of staff, datasets and biological resources are increasingly utilised for discovery purposes in research projects to help in the process of gene discovery, validation and product development.
Plant Services Laboratories
NIAB has extensive service based laboratories provide efficient, scientifically based testing methods at a competitive price.
NIAB has a unique capability of scale, scope and staff experience in biochemical testing for end-use quality in a diverse range of crops including cereals, herbage, sugar beet, oilseeds, vegetables and potatoes. Specialist biochemistry testing includes analysis of seed treatment loading, micro-malting.
Routine and non-routine genotyping services are also available.
Seed quality testing involves both the function of the Official Seed Testing Station for England and Wales, and commercial services to growers and their advisors. Accredited by the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA), the OSTS provides critical support to the 
statutory systems for Defra and the UK Seeds Industry. Using standardized and precise techniques and extensive specialized knowledge, the OSTS and related services combine expertise on seed sampling, seed biology, and seed purity. This capability can be linked to field-based services checking emergence and vigour in different soil types, and investigations on seed ageing.
Plant pathogen diagnostics focuses on seed health testing, potato tuber health, soil testing for various pathogenic agents, and a wider “plant clinic” service diagnosing problems in the growing crop. Backed by NIAB research pathologists, the diagnostic unit can cover major and minor crop species and ornamental species, and provide interpretation and advice on results.
NIAB also has a facility for generating transgenic wheat plants that is available for contract services to third parties.
The John Bingham Laboratory
NIAB’s research group is based in the John Bingham Laboratory, a newly refurbished facility on the Cambridge Huntingdon Road site. It houses a group of forty scientists in modern office and laboratory accommodation with state-of-the-art equipment that supports research targeted at the genetic improvement of crop species.
We have the capability for high throughput DNA preparation, sequence analysis and genotyping. Its research teams are highly skilled in the characterisation and evaluation of genes that have the potential to impact on global challenges of food, water and energy security. In our pre-breeding projects smart breeding approaches are applied using molecular markers to transfer these genes into crop species so that the benefits they provide can be fully evaluated. The NIAB pre-breeding platform is unique in its degree of integration from lab to field and in its interest in public good and focus on useable plant products. NIAB also has a facility for generating transgenic wheat plants that supports its own research and is available for contract services to third parties.
Germplasm Resources
NIAB continues to develop a number of research collections of germplasm that will be uniquely relevant in the provision of solutions to the contemporary challenges faced by society, the government and the agricultural industry. These include collections of synthetic wheats, non-food crop species, beans and the BBSRC funded MAGIC populations.
In its role as technical advisor to Defra and CPVO NIAB is guardian to a number of germplasm collections of significance. For example, we maintain the national variety reference collection for the following species: linseed, wheat, barley, oats, winter oilseed rape, fodder radish, kale, mangels and fodder beet, white mustard, brown mustard, Lithospermum, evening primrose, water cress and borage. The store that houses these collections currently includes over 4500 accessions of authenticated, living samples in useful quantities of current UK crop varieties across a wide range of species and we hold the European collection of chrysanthemum germplasm.
A unique cereal species archive based at NIAB stores museum specimens of seed and ear material from the Percival collection and 2300 entries of UK land-races (early 1900’s-1964) and UK varieties submitted for National Listing (post-1964). This latter collection includes all varieties that failed to make the NL and detailed phenotypic information can be associated with this material.
Business Support Services
NIAB Business Services provide general and specialist IT, Human Resources, Finance and Facilities support across the business.
Conference facilities with a lecture hall, break-out rooms, a canteen and on-site parking are available for events and meetings. Hotel or university halls accommodation is available walking distance and Cambridge is very well-connected to major road routes. Central London is a 50 minute train journey away and all the London airports are easily accessed.