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¹û¶³´«Ã½ Crop Centre at the ¹û¶³´«Ã½ has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s .
The is an internationally significant collection of almost 14,000 seed samples from different vegetable crops including carrot onion, lettuce cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli and closely related wild species.

The collection represents the genetic diversity in the genepool of each crop, and is a vital resource for researchers and plant breeders across the world.

“Vegetables are an important component of a healthy diet and the seed resources within the Genebank will support the development of new and improved varieties in the future”, said who leads the Vegetable Genebank project.

¹û¶³´«Ã½ Crop Centre staff Rob Lillywhite and Carla Sarrouy have contributed to the development of a new on-line course . The course has been developed through a collaboration of individual experts from universities based in the West Midlands region of England - in particular, Coventry University, Harper Adams University, University College Birmingham and the ¹û¶³´«Ã½ – working together as part of the Food Smart City Project funded by Universities West Midlands and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

An international study, headed by from the School of Life Sciences and published in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that plants have evolved ways to control embryo growth and development by emitting information from surrounding cells. A breakthrough that could lead to the creation of a new generation of high yield plants.

Representatives (staff and PhD students) from the School of Life Sciences, including ¹û¶³´«Ã½ Crop Centre, attended and presented at the in Whan, China last week. The meeting provided a platform to exchange research and production information, and to explore the opportunities for cooperations in studies on Brassicaceae genetics and genomics, and their applications in genetic improvement of crop species.