Centre for Sustainable Crops

Overview

The Centre for Sustainable Crops conducts high-quality basic and strategic applied research to improve crop productivity and reduce agriculture's environmental impact through the use of modern technologies.

 The Centre focuses its research in both major and underutilised food crops to generate knowledge that will contribute to improving the sustainability of food crop production.

Alongside plant and crop physiology, a great deal of our research is committed to crop and molecular genetics and breeding. The Centre has strong collaborations nationally and internationally; including with Applied Agricultural Resources Sdn. Bhd (AAR), an internationally recognised premier centre in plantation crop research.

This collaboration has resulted in our state-of-the-art Biotechnology Research Centre next to our campus in Semenyih, Malaysia. This centre alongside our existing facilities at the UK Campus coupled with field and controlled environment laboratories such as Future Crop Glasshouses allow us to conduct research to improve sustainable productivity of crop plants.

Topics

• Molecular genetic analysis & crop improvement
• Plant-pathogen interactions
• Plant & fungal genetics
• Photosynthesis research
• Resource use efficiency
• Mass production of selected plants using tissue culture technology
• Control & expression of morphogenesis in the cloning of plants
• Development of vaccines in plant systems
• Abiotic stress research – specifically drought resistance traits in crop plants
• Antioxidant properties in crops

Collaborations

• Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia
• Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia
• FELDA Biotechnology Centre, Malaysia
• Applied Agricultural Resources, Malaysia
• International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Nigeria
• International Rice Research Institute, Philippines
• Crops for the Future (CFF)
• Crops for the Future Research Centre (CFFRC)