Professor Nigel Halford is a Principal Research Scientist at Rothamsted Research, one of the UK’s premier agricultural research centres.  Professor Halford obtained his first degree from the University of Liverpool in 1983 and a Master’s degree from University College London in 1984.  He studied the genes encoding a family of wheat seed proteins for his PhD while at Rothamsted in the 1980s, then spent 11 years at Long Ashton Research Station near Bristol before returning to Rothamsted in 2002.  He is the author of more than 160 scientific papers, has written books on ‘Genetically Modified Crops’, now in its third edition (entitled ‘Crop Biotechnology’), ‘An Introduction to Bioenergy’, and ‘Acrylamide in Food’, and edited books on ‘Protein Phosphorylation in Plants’, ‘Plant Biotechnology’, and ‘Energy Crops’.  His research programme concerns the genetics of metabolic regulation in crop plants, how plant metabolism is affected by environmental stress and crop management, and how it can be manipulated to improve crop yield, quality, and food safety. A major strategic application of this work is reducing the potential for acrylamide formation in wheat, potato and rye products. Professor Halford has worked with GM and more recently genome edited plants for more than 35 years and has been a prominent participant in the GM debate in Europe since the 1990s. He is a Visiting Professor at Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences and received The Magnolia Silver Award from the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government in 2012.  He is also Honorary Treasurer of the Association of Applied Biologists, Special Professor at the University of Nottingham, a former member of the UK’s Advisory Committee for Animal Feedingstuffs (ACAF), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. 

What is gene editing and how will it benefit arable farming? Panel discussion