Sustainable bioprotection

Research in this theme focuses on

  • understanding and harnessing ecosystem processes to provide new bio-protection strategies that underpin sustainable agriculture and environmental protection
  • using advanced molecular techniques to elucidate plant-microbe and microbe-pest interactions in the soil
  • exploring and manipulating the biodiversity/ecosystem function (BDEF) relationship to produce favourable effects by adding biodiversity to ecosystems services such as biological control
  • using advanced molecular techniques to measure the effects of environmental stress on the expression of genes involved in plant productivity.
Biological control science can remove potato scab, left, to deliver healthy potatoes, right.

A flagship programme within this Theme is the Greening Waipara Project. Fifty North Canterbury vineyards are collaborating in this world-leading biodiversity enhancement programme.

A lot of our work with soil is undertaken in the New Zealand Biotron - a purpose-built facility unique to New Zealand.

Theme Leaders: Professor Alison Stewart and Professor Leo Condron, both of Lincoln University.

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