Using wild species to improve crop diversity - Prof Kathy Willis скачать в хорошем качестве

Using wild species to improve crop diversity - Prof Kathy Willis

We need more crop diversity. As 21st century plant hunters scour the globe, looking for new crop varieties to feed the world, Prof Kathy Willis of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew talks about the need to expand the genetic diversity of our crops. 0:00 Genetic bottlenecks: what's the problem? 0:50 The need to discovery new plant species 1:29 Finding new species of yam 1:50 Discovering 128 species of coffee! 2:37 Creating genetic diversity using wild species Speaker profile: Professor Kathy Willis First is the Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a Professor of Biodiversity in the University of Oxford. At Kew, her role involves the day-to-day oversight of 230 scientific staff across six departments as well as Kew’s extensive scientific plant collections ranging from millions of herbarium and fungarium specimens, 2.6 billion seeds in the Millennium Seedbank, to plant DNA and genome size databases. In Oxford, she leads the Oxford Long-Term Ecology Laboratory. She also serves on a number of committees involved with implementation of science into policy including the UK’s government’s Natural Capital Committee and on the scientific advisory board of the International Sustainable Biomass Committee. Kathy completed her undergraduate degree at Southampton University in Environmental Science going on to Cambridge University to complete a PhD in Botany, followed by NERC and Royal Society University Fellowships. In 1998, she moved to Oxford University to take up a lectureship in Geography teaching plant sciences. She developed the Oxford Long-term Ecology Laboratory in the Geography department, set-up and ran an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation and Management, and was made a Professor of Long-term Ecology in 2008. In 2010, she was appointed to the Tasso Leventis Chair in Biodiversity and set up the Oxford Martin School Biodiversity Institute. She has been Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew since 2013.