AEV Richardson Lecture

Dissecting nitrogen use efficiency in modern wheat, or who cares about nitrogen, and what can we do about it? Listen to Dr Malcolm Hawkesford's talk which was given for the Inaugural AEV Richardson Lecture held on the 29th November, 2010.

In this Lecture, Dr Hawkesford will discuss targets for crop improvement including nutrient capture, photosynthetic capacity and canopy longevity, nutrient remobilization, yield and quality stability and the grain yield - grain protein conundrum and the prospects for improving grain protein deviation. The basic approach taken during his research involves the field scale screening of a wide diversity of wheat germplasm under different nutritional conditions, as well as exploiting the world's oldest plant nutrition experiment, the Broadbalk experiment at Rothamsted. Such materials are used for de-convoluting traits contributing to nutrient use efficiency and crop performance, and utilising this variation for novel gene discovery approach via transcriptome and/or QTL analysis. Validation of candidate genes is undertaken via transgenic approaches.

History

The A.E.V. Richardson Lecture is named in honour of the former foundation Professor of Agriculture and first Director of the Waite Agricultural Research Institute. Before joining the University of Adelaide in 1924, Professor Richardson was the Superintendent of Agriculture for Victoria and played a large role in establishing the School of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne. His direction of agricultural education and research continued during his time as Director of the Waite (1924 to 1938). He preached and practised a constant theme: advances in agricultural practice and increased productivity depended on scientifically based experimentation. Richardson's main fields of personal research were cereal agronomy, pasture research and wheat-breeding. From 1934 to 1946, Richardson was Deputy Chief Executive Officer of CSIR and then Chief Executive Officer until his retirement in 1949. Richardson directed research and development in Australian primary production over the period of its most rapid growth. A.E.V. Richardson died in December 1949.