NIAB - National Institute of Agricultural Botany
Plant Science Into Practice
Contract Research
Contact: Dr Juno McKee, Dr Jane Thomas
The skills and expertise of NIAB Plant Services are focussed around the physical characterisation, analysis and/or description of plant materials and plant products, using high throughput systems. The main approaches include plant phenotype assessment (using both traditional and automatic image capture systems), biochemical analyses and seed biology studies.
Supporting processes include project management, database management, seed and crop sample storage, data analysis and interpretation, provision of advice and training.
Resources within Plant Services include a seed-testing laboratory, accredited by the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA), an analytical laboratory providing biochemical assessments and an image analysis suite. These teams have unique expertise in the development and utilisation of high throughput systems for screening seed and crop based traits.
These high throughput systems, or phenoptyping platforms, are now being extended to support molecular biology approaches to trait discovery and characterisation.
As such these platforms are now available as scientific discovery tools and are being used in the field of plant functional genomics - the discovery and creation of new alleles associated with important traits in key crops. NIAB’s capability and experience includes a wide range of agriculturally important crops, for both food and non-food uses, as well as a wide range of ornamental and novel crop species.