Crop Protection

Dr Mark Stevens

Research Group Leader

Objectives

The main role of the centre is to develop improved strategies for the control of pests and diseases of arable crops, with an emphasis on the UK sugar beet crop. This includes strategies to control root and foliar diseases caused by fungi, viruses and bacteria, control of insect and fungal vectors of diseases. In sugar beet the emphasis is placed on improving the level of resistance to the major diseases in the UK beet crop using genes derived from wild Beta species.

Particular aims include:

• Developing more effective forms of resistance to rhizomania.
• Improve forecasting methods and strategies to control virus yellows.
• Monitoring and control of insecticide-resistant aphids.
• Exploitation of new insecticide chemistry to control pests, especially soil pests, aphids (including resistant biotypes) and spider mites.

The centre also carries out research in other arable crops including cereals and oilseed rape, including the use of molecular markers to understand host-defence mechanisms and new disease strategies in response to climate change and new chemistry. Fungicide resistance development in pathogens.

Main Research Projects

• New sources of disease resistance through the use of molecular markers.
• Resistance to pathogens and their vectors, notably Polymyxa betae,.
• Control strategies against Turnip yellows virus in oilseed rape
• Fungicidal control of foliar diseases.
• New disease strategies in response to climate change
• Aphid monitoring and infectivity studies to improve virus yellows forecasting.
• Virus variability and its implications for resistant varieties.
• Resistance to yellowing viruses.
• Virus-vector-plant interactions.

Crop Protection Research Group

• Dr Mark Stevens - Research Group Leader
• Dr Belinda Townsend
• Dr Lucy James
• Dr Aiming Qi
• Felicita Vigano
• Daphne Mothersole
• Kathy Bean
• Philippa Hallsworth
• Kath Hudson
• Anne Perry