Legume quality and resilience
Legume crops, such as cowpeas, are crucial for the nutrition of millions in Sub-Saharan Africa. They are also essential for sustainable crop production systems because of their capacity to fix atmospheric nitrogen. We aim to contribute to the development of legume cultivars that combine improved nutritional quality and better adaptation to environmental stresses. This will be achieved through a deeper understanding of the genetic basis of key nutritional and agronomic traits and the development of genetic markers that can be used for stacking them into improved cultivars.
Research areas
Enhancing mineral content and bioavailability
Improving the mineral content and/or bioavailability of indigenous and staple food crops is critical to combat the prevalence of micronutrient malnutrition among low-income communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Previous efforts to increase the concentrations of iron and zinc in some staple food crops have been limited by the tight homeostasis of these elements, because they are toxic to plants. Therefore, instead of attempting to improve mineral density alone, we aim to find genetic variants with reduced phytates, tannins, and polyphenols that can be utilised to enhance mineral bioavailability.
Understanding the interaction between quality traits
Seeds are reservoirs of various compounds such as proteins, starch, sugars, fat, and minerals. Manipulation of one or more of these constituents can lead to a cascade of changes that can affect the chemical composition, morphology, and viability of seeds. For instance, phytate concentration is linked not only to mineral bioavailability, but also to raffinose family oligosaccharides, cooking quality of legumes, and seed germination. These relationships pose a conundrum for breeding efforts, and we aim to better understand these relationships at the metabolic and genetic levels.
Drought tolerance
Drought tolerance is a complex trait that is influenced by various morphological and physiological characteristics. We aim to identify key traits (either morphological or physiological) related to drought tolerance that can be adapted for high-throughput screening methods. This would facilitate the study of large populations and enable GWAS, QTL mapping, or mutant screening for drought tolerance.
About the group leader
I completed my PhD at the University of Reading in Professor Donal O’Sullivan’s lab, where I worked on characterising faba bean seed protein composition and mapping its underlying genetics. I then joined John Innes Centre in Norwich as a postdoctoral researcher to work on the genetics of pea nutritional quality in the labs of Professor Janneke Balk and Professor Claire Domoney. My current research at Crop Science Centre aims to enhance the nutritional and culinary quality of legumes and other underutilised food crops by discovering the underlying genetic mechanisms.
