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Chief Executive, East Malling Research

Professor of Global Food Security, University of Reading

Tel: +44 (0)1732 843833

Fax: +44 (0)1732 849067

Peter Gregory became Chief Executive of East Malling Research on 1 May 2011, simultaneously taking the role of Professor of Global Food Security at the University of Reading. Until recently, Peter was the Chief Executive of the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI).

I am responsible for the scientific direction and administrative efficiency of East Malling Research.

At the University, I assist in building research programmes in the Centre for Food Security under the direction of Professor Richard Tiffin. I am responsible for organising a seminar programme for the Centre.

My research is conducted at two levels. For much of my career I have been active in researching the growth of plant roots and their activities in taking up water and nutrients. The zone of soil next to a root, the rhizosphere, is a very active region for biological, physical and chemical changes in soils and my research, through PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, is concerned with the quantification of the processes leading to these changes. Non-invasive imaging has proved a novel tool for investigating root growth in soils and the movement of insects towards roots and is being developed to examine other processes. I have been exploring the effects of dwarfing and semi-dwarfing genes on root growth in wheat and barley with Dr Mike Gooding at the University of Reading and this is an area of work that we should like to continue to develop. In my new role at East Malling, I plan to become involved with research to characterise the properties of rootstocks used in the production of many types of fruit, with a view to improving the efficiency of selection and the use of resources of water and nutrients.

My second research interest is at a global level with interests in global environmental changes and food security. Throughout my career I have been engaged with issues of increasing crop yields especially in drought-prone, rainfed environments. More recently I have engaged and led several international research programmes (Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems [GCTE] and Global Environmental Change and Food Systems [GECAFS]) to understand the effects of global changes on food security. With a PhD student and a collaborator in the Centre for Environment Change and Human Resilience at the University of Dundee we are examining the effects of climate variability and change on crop production, and the responses of farmers, in two regions of Malawi.

Powlson, D.S., Gregory, P.J., Whalley, W.R., Quinton, J.N., Hopkins, D.W., Whitmore, A.P., Hirsch, P.R. and Goulding, K.W.T. (2011). Soil management in relation to sustainable agriculture and ecosystem services. Food Policy 36, S72-S87.doi: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.11.025

Newton, A.C., Johnson, S.N. and Gregory, P.J. (2011).Implications of climate change for pests, diseases, crop yield and food security. Euphytica (in press).

Clayton, S.J., Clegg, C.D., Bristow, A.W., Gregory, P.J., Headon D.M. and Murray, P.J. (2010). Movement of newly assimilated ¹³C in the grass Lolium perenne and its incorporation into rhizosphere microbial DNA. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 24, 535-540. doi: 10.1002/rcm.4392.

Johnson, S.N., Barton, A.T., Clark, K.E., Gregory, P.J., McMenemy, L.S. and Hancock, R.D. (2010). Elevated atmospheric CO₂ impairs the performance of root-feeding vine weevils by modifying root growth and secondary metabolites. Global Change Biology doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02264.x.

Smith, P., Gregory, P.J., van Vuuren, D., Obersteiner, M., Havlik, P., Rounsevell, M., Woods, J., Stehfest, E. and Bellarby, J. (2010). Competition for land. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 2941-2957. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0127.

Murray, P.J., Gregory, P.J., Granger, S.J., Headon, D.M. and Johnson, S.N. (2010). Dispersal of soil-dwelling clover root weevil (Sitona lepidus Gyllenhal, Coleoptera: Curculionidae) larvae in mixed plant communities. Applied Soil Ecology.doi: 10.1016/j.apsoil.2010.09.008.

Dupuy, L., Gregory, P.J. and Bengough, A.G. 2010. Root growth models: towards a new generation of continuous approaches. Journal of Experimental Botany 61, 2131-2143. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erp389.

Hargreaves, C.E., Gregory, P.J. and A.G. Bengough (2009). Measuring root traits in barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. vulgare and ssp. spontaneum) seedlings using gel chambers, soil sacs and X-ray microtomography. Plant and Soil 316, 285-297. doi:10.1007/s11104-008-9780-4.

Gregory, P.J., Johnson, S.N., Newton, A.C. and Ingram, J.S.I. (2009). Integrating pests and pathogens into the climate change/food security debate. Journal of Experimental Botany 60, 2827-2838. doi:10.1093/jxb/erp080.

Wojciechowski, T., Gooding, M.J., Ramsay, L. and Gregory, P.J. (2009). The effects of dwarfing alleles on seedling root growth of wheat. Journal of Experimental Botany 60, 2565-2573. doi:10.1093/jxb/erp107.

Swanson, MM.., Fraser, G., Daniell, T.J., Torrance, L., Gregory, P.J. and Taliansky, M. (2009). Viruses in soils: morphological diversity and abundance in the rhizosphere. Annals of Applied Biology 155, 51-60. doi:10.1111/j.1744-7348.2009.00319.x.

Gregory, P.J., Bengough, A.G., Grinev, D., Schmidt, S., Thomas, W.T.B., Wojciechowski, T. and Young I.M. (2009). Root phenomics of crops � opportunities and challenges. Functional Plant Biology 36, 922-929. doi: 10.1071/FP09150.

George, T.S., Richardson, A.E., Li, S.S., Gregory, P.J. and Daniell, T.J. (2009). Extracellular release of a heterologous phytase from roots of transgenic plants: does manipulation of rhizosphere biochemistry impact microbial community structure? FEMS Microbiology Ecology 70, 433.445. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-6941.2009.00762.x

Johnson, S.N., Gregory, P.J., McNicol, J.W., Oodally, Y., Zhang, X. and Murray, P.J. (2009). Effects of soil conditions and drought on egg hatching and larval survival of the clover root weevil (Sitona lepidus). Applied Soil Ecology 44, 75-79. doi: 10.1016/j.apsoil.2009.10.002 .

Ingram, J.S.I., Gregory, P.J. and Izac, A.-M. (2008). The role of agronomic research in climate change and food security policy. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 126, 4-12.

Mahmood-ul-Hassan, M., Akhtar, M.S. and Gregory, P.J. (2008). Solute movement through intact columns of cryoturbated Upper Chalk. Hydrological Processes 22, 2086-2093.

George, T.S., Gregory, P.J., Hocking, P. and Richardson, A.E. (2008). Variation in root-associated phosphatase activities in wheat contributes to the utilization of organic P substrates in-vitro, but does not explain differences in the P-nutrition of plants when grown in soils. Environmental and Experimental Botany 64, 239-249.

Clayton, S.J., Read, D.B., Murray, P.J. and Gregory, P.J. (2008). Exudation of alcohol and aldehyde sugars from roots of defoliated Lolium perenne L. grown under sterile conditions. Journal of Chemical Ecology 34, 1411-1421.

Gregory, P.J. and Ingram, J.S.I. (2008). Climate change and the current �food crisis�. CAB Reviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources 3, No. 099.

Mahmood-ul-Hassan, M. and Gregory, P.J. (2008). The role of rainfall intensity and soil in determining rates of flow through cryoturbated chalk. Pakistan Journal of Science and Industrial Research 51, 235-241.

Science and the Garden: The Scientific Basis of Horticultural Practice, Second Edition (2008). Edited by D.S. Ingram, D. Vince-Prue and P.J. Gregory. Wiley/Blackwell Ltd., Oxford, U.K.

Plant Roots: Growth, Activity and Interaction with Soils (2006). P.J. Gregory. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, UK. 318 p.