Biography
iCASE BBSRC DTP University of Cambridge and DSV UK
Project: MAGIC Mill and Bake: Improving the milling and nutritional quality of UK wheat
Whilst progress in wheat breeding has achieved considerable gains in yield, the associated negative relationship with quality traits has proven difficult to unravel. The milling and baking industrial processes require specific quality traits that are generally only selected for in late generations of a breeding programme. In his project, Nick will investigate the genetic architecture of milling and baking as well as nutritional quality in elite UK wheat relevant to a UK breeding programme. To so this, he will employ modern genetic and genomic techniques such as QTL mapping using MAGIC populations and genomic prediction models.
Nick worked at NIAB for three years, prior to starting his PhD in 2018, where he worked on developing the 16-founder MAGIC Diverse wheat mapping population. His interest in agricultural research started from working on arable farms in school holidays and since then he developed this interest working on a wide range of crop field trials after completing a degree in Conservation Biology and Ecology at the University of Exeter.
