Dr Charlotte Nellist

Research interests

Charlotte is a group leader whose research focuses on the characterisation of disease resistance across a wide range of crops and on understanding host–pathogen interactions. She has led the United Kingdom Pathogen Virulence Survey since 2021 and has served as joint lead with Kostya Kanyuka since 2024. The survey conducts annual monitoring of wheat yellow and brown rust in the UK, reporting on changes in pathogen virulence and their impact on UK wheat varieties.

Charlotte has a background in virology and completed her PhD at the University of Warwick, studying the ‘deployment and mechanism of broad-spectrum resistance to turnip mosaic virus in Brassica rapa, Chinese cabbage’. She currently supervises/co-supervises two PhD students investigating aphid transmitted viral diseases of lettuce and wheat.

Charlotte leads the Field Pathology team, which delivers pathology trials supporting the UK Value for Cultivation and Use (VCU) assessments for the Variety Listing process in England and Wales for combinable crops, under contract to Defra and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).

Before transferring to Niab Cambridge Crop Research she worked at Niab East Malling, where she focused on improving durable disease resistance in horticultural crops (mostly in strawberry and apple) and studying pathogenicity of the associated Phytophthora and fungal spp.

Supervision of students

• Yield, quality and shelf-life problems in lettuce due to virus infections in the UK (supervision of PhD student Jasmine Atkins). Duration: 2025-2030 (part-time). Co-Supervisors: Prof. John Walsh (Niab), Prof. Guy Barker (University of Warwick) and Pete (G’s Growers). Funding: UKRI, Collaborative Training Partnership for Sustainable Agricultural Innovation (CTP-SAI)
• Wheat wild relative introgression lines as a source of barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) resistance (co-supervision of PhD student Katie Hawkins). Duration
  2024-2028. Co-supervisrors: Surbhi Grewal (University of Nottingham), Kostya Kanyuka (Niab), Julie King (University of Nottingham), Lola Gonzalez-Penades (RAGT) and Chrisopher Burt (RAGT). Funding: UKRI, Nottingham BBSRC Doctoral Training Programme (DTP)

Full publication list at Google Scholar, ORCiD or ResearchGate