Charlotte Anne White

ADAS · Soils, Crops & Water

Field beans (Vicia faba L.) are the most extensively grown grain legume in the UK but their contribution to farming and food systems could be improved if their yields were enhanced. Average on‐farm bean yields have varied between 3 and 4 t ha⁻¹ for four decades but with much variation between individual crops. A “Bean Yield Enhancement Network” (Be...

Root research on field grown crops is hindered by the difficulty of estimating root biomass in soil. Root washing, the current standard method is laborious and expensive. Biochemical methods to quantify root biomass in soil, targeting species-specific DNA, have potential as a more efficient assay. We combined an efficient DNA extraction method, des...

Overall recommendations and priorities Increase access to and use of current knowledge Many growers are probably unaware of all the weed management information that is available to them. Knowledge is also often kept within the individual sectors.There is much relevant work on weeds that was once funded by MAFF or Defra and it is often hard to fin...

Cover crops are grown primarily for the purpose of ‘protecting or improving’ between periods of regular crop production. There are four main types of use including; improving soil fertility, improving soil structure, managing weeds and pests and environmental management. The most appropriate cover crop species/management will depend on what the gro...

Cover crops have great potential to contribute to the sustainable intensification of crop production through several mechanisms including: improving soil structure/quality; improving cash crop establishment; greater nutrient and water retention; reducing the risk of soil erosion, surface run off and diffuse pollution by providing soil cover; managi...

Root length density (RLD) was measured to 1 m depth for 17 commercial crops of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) and 40 crops of winter oilseed rape [Brassica napus; oilseed rape (OSR)] grown in the UK between 2004 and 2013. Taking the critical RLD (cRLD) for water capture as 1cm cm(-3), RLDs appeared inadequate for full water capture on average bel...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects on yield, oil concentration and nitrogen (N) uptake efficiency of N fertilizer applied to the foliage of oilseed rape during and soon after flowering. Four field experiments were conducted in the UK during the 2008/09 and 2009/10 seasons which investigated six rates of soil-applied N (ammoniu...

Breeding plants that produce equivalent growth with reduced water input (improved water use efficiency (WUE)) is necessary for sustained future crop production. Water deficit induces redistribution and synthesis of the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) thereby restricting transpiration. ABA is synthesised via cleavage of oxygenated carotenoids (xant...

Previous work where 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase (NCED) was over-expressed using the constitutive Gelvin Superpromoter resulted in mild increases in abscisic acid (ABA) accumulation, accompanied by stomatal closure and increased water-use efficiency (WUE), but with apparently little impact on long-term biomass production. However, one of the n...