Harold Woolhouse Lecture

"Looking back and looking forward: time for fresh thinking on roles of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in plant phosphorus (P) uptake" Listen to Professor Sally Smith's talk which was given at the Inaugural Harold Woolhouse Lecture on the 8th November, 2010.

This talk will start with some brief reflections on Harold Woolhouse at the Waite. Professor Smith will then 1) review the immediate relevance of studies of phosphorus (P) nutrition of plants, in the light of the low availability of P in soil, the need for P fertiliser application to achieve satisfactory crop yields and the limited global P resources; 2) introduce arbuscular mycorrhizas as the most common and widespread adaptation involved in plant P uptake; 3) provide an update on how recent research has fundamentally changed knowledge of how AM symbioses influence plant P uptake; and 4) present a new hypothesis to explain why some plants (including the important crops wheat, barley and tomato) sometimes grow better when non-mycorrhizal.

History

The 3rd Harold Woolhouse Lecture is named in honour of the former Director of the Waite Agricultural Research Institute. Professor Woolhouse finished his PhD at the University of Adelaide before spending much of his early career (during the 1960s and 1970s) researching heavy metals and senescence. Between 1980 and 1989, Professor Woolhouse developed and directed the world class plant biology research facility, the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norwich, United Kingdom. In 1990, he became Director of the Waite Agricultural Research Institute and was responsible for the co-location of the South Australian Research and Development Institute and Primary Industries and Resources South Australia on the Waite Campus. He also masterminded the merging of Roseworthy Agricultural College with the University of Adelaide. He left Adelaide in August 1995 due to ill health and passed away in June 1996.