Horticultural Crop Research (East Malling)

Responsible for the day-to-day running, maintenance, commercial management, and supervision of activities at the WET Centre at East Malling.

Research interests

Michelle specialises in the minimisation of pesticide use in fruit horticulture, improving pollination in fruit crops and incorporating modern fruit growing practices with Integrated Pest Management. The former includes research on improving pest monitoring by developing semiochemical manipulation of insects, optimising the use of biological control agents and enhancing and fostering local landscape ecology to provide the ecosystem service of pest control.

Research interests

Research interests

Timo is working as a principal research scientist at the Genetics, Genomics & Breeding department at East Malling and as an associate professor at the Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the molecular control of reproductive development and environmental adaptation in strawberries using woodland strawberry as a model. His group applies population, quantitative and functional genomic methods to identify key genes and generates transgenic lines to validate gene functions.

Former Head of Science at NIAB’s horticultural centre at East Malling in Kent, Xiangming is responsible for developing and delivering the strategy for research activities across the whole of NIAB. This is in addition to his role in co-ordinating research activities at East Malling.

Research interests

The aim of my research is to understand the nutritional requirements of both annual and perennial production systems and develop “best” management strategies that improve nutrient use efficiency in economically important crops while maintaining and/or improving existing yields and quality. I am also interest to manipulate nutrient supply to enhance secondary plant compounds on fruit and vegetables. To achieve this I study the influence of nutrient availability on phytonutrient biosynthesis, using physiological and molecular biological tools.

Research interests