Abi Johnson

Research Interests
I am principally a plant breeder, involved in all aspects of the strawberry breeding programmes at EMR. I manage a commercial project, the aim of which is to develop strawberry varieties that are suitable for tabletop production. For the Strawberry Breeding Club programme in my role as Trials Officer, I manage the distribution of advanced trial material, collate and disseminate results generated from the offsite trials. I currently manage the glasshouse trials for a 2 year HDC project, with the objective to determine the genetics of resistance to Verticillium wilt in strawberry. I also assist with the commercially-funded sweet cherry breeding programme at EMR. I was previously involved in a 5 year Defra project to determine the response of strawberry to water-limited conditions in order to identify quantitative trait loci associated with water use efficiency (WU0107). Additionally, I have participated in other areas of Defra-funded research; investigating the heat tolerance of everbearing lines (FO0306), the development of germplasm with a reduced thermodormant response to high temperature periods (FO0313) and the understanding of inheritance of extended dormancy in EMR late season germplasm (HH3201SSF).
Selected Publications
- Whitehouse, A.B., Johnson, A.W., Passey, A.J., McLeary K.J. & Simpson, D.W. (2014). Recent Progress in Breeding for Improved Performance in Programmed Cropping Systems. Acta Horticulturae 1049. 867-872.
- Whitehouse, A.B., Johnson, A.W., Passey, A.J., McLeary K.J. & Simpson, D.W. (2014). ‘Serenity’: A paler skin-coloured somaclonal variant of the short-day cultivar ‘Florence’. Acta Horticulturae 1049. 819-821.
- Simpson, D.W., Whitehouse, A.B., Johnson, A.W., McLeary, K.J. & Passey, A.J. (2014). 'Elegance' and 'Vibrant', two new strawberry cultivars fro programmed cropping in Northern Europe. Acta Horticulturae 1049. 259-261.
- Johnson, A.W., Davies, M.J., Grant ,O.M. and Simpson, D.W. (2014). Developing strawberry cultivars with improved water use efficiency Acta Horticulturae 1049. 853-858.
- Johnson, A. W. and Simpson, D.W. (2014). The effect of deficit irrigation on the flowering behaviour of two day neutral and one everbearing strawberry cultivar Acta Horticulturae 1049. 435-438.
- Bonthala, V.S., Roy, R., Sahu, K., Misra, G., & Chattopadhyay, D.. (2014). Tomato genomic resources database: An integrated repository of useful tomato genomic information for basic and applied research. PLoS One,. 9(1), 1-9.
- Grant ,O.M., Davies, M.J., Johnson, A.W. and Simpson, D.W. (2012). Physiological and morphological responses to water deficits in cultivated strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) and in one of its progenitors, F. chiloensis. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 83; 23-32.
- Olga M. Grant, Michael J. Davies, Abigail W. Johnson, David W. Simpson . (2012). Physiological and growth responses to water deficits in cultivated strawberry (Fragaria ×ananassa) and in one of its progenitors, Fragaria chiloensis. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 83. pp 23-32.
- Grant, O.M, Davies, M.J, James, C.M, Johnson, A.W, Leinonen, I., Simpson, D.W. (2012). Thermal imaging and carbon isotope composition indicate variation amongst strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) cultivars in stomatal conductance and water use efficiency. Environmental and Experimental Botany, Vol 76. pp 7-15.
- Grant, O.M, Johnson, A.W, Davies, M.J, James, C.M, Simpson, D.W . (2010). Physiological and morphological diversity of cultivated strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) in response to water deficit. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 68 (3) . pp 264-272.
- Johnson, A.W., Grant, O.M., Davies, M.J., James, C.M., Passey, A.J. & Simpson, D.W. (2009). Determining the response of ten strawberry cultivars to water-limited conditions. Acta Horticulturae Proceedings of the VI International Strawberry Symposium, 842: 769-772.
- Whitehouse, A.B., Johnson, A.W. & Simpson, D.W. (2009). Manipulation of the production pattern of everbearing cultivars by defoliation treatments. Acta Horticulturae 842. 507-510.
- Johnson, A.W. and Simpson, D.W. (2009). Development of strawberry breeding lines with extended dormancy. Acta Horticulturae Proceedings of the VI International Strawberry Symposium, 842: 507-510.
- Johnson, A.W., Grant, O.M., Davies, M.J., Passey, A.J. & Simpson, D.W. (2009). Investigating the response of strawberry to water-deficit conditions. Acta Horticulturae Proceedings of the Workshop on Berry Production in Changing Climate Conditions and Cultivation Systems 838:169-173.
- Simpson, D.W., Hammond, K.J. Johnson, A.W., Passey, A.J. & Whitehouse, A.B. (McLeary, K.J. née Hammond). Six new strawberry cultivars from East Malling Research. Acta Horticulturae 842. 525-528.