Giles Oldroyd

My research focuses on understanding the signalling and developmental processes in plants that allow interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria, that facilitate the capture of nutrients from the environment. My mission is to eradicate the need for inorganic fertilisers in agriculture, through the use of these beneficial microbial associations. We aim to achieve this through optimising the use of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi that form associations with most crop plants and through the transfer of the nitrogen-fixing association to the many crop plants that lack this association. Greater use of these beneficial microbial associations in agriculture has much potential for enhancing the sustainability of agriculture in high and middle-income countries and providing sustainable productivity for farmers in low-income countries.