Plant nutrition research to benefit global crops

A University of New England researcher has won an award, against international competition, for work on plant nutrition and the management of crop nutrients that he hopes will contribute to global food security.

Richard Flavel, a member of UNE’s School of Environmental and Rural Science, picked up an International Plant Nutrition Institute Scholar Award for the research he is conducting towards a PhD degree.

His research concentrates on the way phosphorus, an important component of fertilisers worldwide, is used in cereal crops such as wheat, triticale and rye. “Phosphorus is a limited resource, and there is a real concern about where it will come from in the future,” he said. “That’s why we’re looking at how we can make the most efficient use of the fertiliser we apply in order to help ensure food security in the future.

“At the moment we’re using new technologies including micro-CT scanning, which is basically like a medical CAT scanner but with a higher resolution, and we’re using that to see what the roots are doing and how they respond to the fertiliser. We’re also using portable X-ray fluorescence technology to map where the phosphorus is in a soil profile and how the roots are taking it up.”

Flavel hopes his research will have real-world applications in the way fertilisers are applied and in the breeding of plants to have more efficient root systems.

He is quick to thank his supervisors at UNE - Dr Chris Guppy and Professor Iain Young - but his project is very much a collaborative one, with supervisors and scholarships also coming from the CSIRO, the University of Adelaide, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

He did his undergraduate study at UNE and has returned, after working in agronomy, to conduct his PhD project titled Root Vigour of Cereal Genotypes in Response to Phosphorus Nutrition and Water Availability.

He said he was enjoying research work and was very much looking forward to the future at the university. “There are great facilities here, and it’s going to be a great place to be in the next few years, with a lot more academics on the ground and some really groundbreaking research ahead that should improve our understanding of these systems dramatically,” he said.