Dr Andrea Harper

Research

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Research Overview

The Harper Lab investigates the genetic factors that control how plants respond to stress and interact with their environment. We work on various species, focussing on traits that are important for ensuring food security, protecting the environment, or improving the sustainability of agriculture.

Working towards wheat sustainability

Wheat is one of the most important crops in the world, but as the population grows and the climate changes, we will need to develop more resilient, nutrient and water-efficient varieties. We are identifying landrace wheat lines with improved tolerance to abiotic stresses such as drought and heat, and developing cutting-edge techniques for the analysis of omics data to unpick the genetic and epigenetic control of these traits.

Ralstonia bacterial wilt

Ralstonia solanacearum is a bacterial pathogen of global importance, causing diseases such as bacterial wilt and potato brown rot. We are investigating sustainable ways to tackle this pathogen, including biocontrol with bacteriophages, and crop improvement using naturally resistant wild plant hosts

Understanding susceptibility to ash dieback disease

Ash dieback disease, caused by a fungal pathogen, is killing many of our ash trees. We are studying the genetics of ash trees to understand why a small proportion of them are able tolerate the fungus better than others.

Teaching and scholarship

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In my teaching, I like to introduce students to the newest techniques being applied in the areas of plant breeding and genetics in interesting and accessible ways, whilst encouraging them to think about how these approaches could be used to provide real-world impacts.

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My lectures broadly cover the study of complex genetic traits, genome evolution, and the analysis of high throughput genome and transcriptome data.

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My tutorials are under the broad heading of plant science. We discuss topics such as disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance in plants, and the newest techniques in genetic analysis, genetic modification and gene editing as tools for crop breeding and protection. 

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Undergraduate and Masters-level projects are available in my lab which broadly aim to understand the genetic control of traits of importance for the improved resilience of plants. Projects are usually multi-disciplinary, often combining glasshouse, bioinformatics and molecular lab work, and are designed to give students experience of new analytical methods and an increased knowledge of the subject, whilst generating new data on biologically important traits.