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Genetics

The Genetics Team brings together the combined expertise of two research groups - the Crop Genetics Group and the Diversity Genomics Group, totalling ten full-time research staff as well as a variable number of visiting workers and students.

The Team represents NIAB’s generic capability to:

  • link phenotypic variation in target traits with specific molecular markers
  • mine germplasm diversity for novel variation in genes of interest
  • understand and exploit the domestication syndrome as a functional genomics tool
  • characterise, map and exploit regulatory polymorphisms relevant to crop traits
  • undertake the genetic dissection of complex traits in crop species of interest
  • positional cloning in complex genomes
  • develop novel molecular tools to solve practical problems in variety dentification., seed purity, provenance and authenticity and GM detection


The Team has well-equipped molecular genetics laboratories with the following core facilities:

  • Highly automated plant DNA extraction using Beckman Biomek FX
  • Liquid-handling robotics for high throughput PCR setup
  • ABI3100 fluorescent sequencer and 2 x LI-COR 4200 genotyping systems
  • Real-time PCR on both ABI7900HT and Lightcycler platforms
  • GenPix-II colony picking/arraying robot
  • Bioinformatics pipelines for various processes underpinning the above such as
                - sequence cleanup, annotation, storage
                - genotyping data scoring, QA, and storage
                - syntenic marker development