Since its transfer to the University of Warwick in 2004, Horticulture Research International (HRI) has increased its grant funding and its funds from levy bodies.
“It’s still early days for Warwick HRI,” said director Professor Simon Bright, below. “It still retains significant support from Defra and a smaller core grant from the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council
(BBSRC). HRI scientists need time to adapt to the different research culture and funding environment of a university, but it remains the UK’s major provider of strategic research for horticultural R&D.”
Being part of the university also allows for cross-disciplinary research with other departments; for example, Dr David Chandler’s collaboration with the department of politics & international studies, examining barriers to the industry’s uptake of bio-pesticides and looking at changes in regulation to facilitate their wider use, and Dr Vicky Buchanan-Wollaston and Professor David Pink’s broccoli genetics research, in collaboration with Syngenta, to help breeders identify the best plants.
There are also three masters courses on offer as part of the integration of HRI into Warwick: enterprise in horticulture, modelling biological populations and interactions, and plant bioscience for crop production. And there are three spin-out businesses: Warwick Insect Technologies, Prospero Therapeutics and Warwick Plant Genomics Libraries Ltd.
The move to the university has also opened up opportunities for funding from the Science Research Investment Fund.
The bulk of core BBSRC funding will cease this year, and Defra funding is scheduled to come to an end by 2012.
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