Tester's research continues to grow

Federation Fellow Professor Mark Tester is confident that his recent Australian Research Council grant will enable him to provide further valuable insights into how plants work.

In the November ARC grants, Professor Tester, from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus, was the big winner receiving $1.45 million over five years.

His project title is Controlling accumulation of elements in the shoots of higher plants by manipulating processes in specific cell types in the roots.

"This grant complements the work we started at the University of Cambridge and will now help us to focus on Australia's problems," he said.

"And with the five-year period, we can dig deeper into these issues. The considerable funding also means we can establish a large team of researchers to undertake the work."

An excited Professor Tester said the projects would provide insights into how plants control what nutrients and toxins accumulate in their shoots.

"Salt tolerant plants often keep sodium out of their shoots so this work will help develop salt tolerant crop. Another example of the usefulness of this program would be to help efficiency of fertiliser use by plants," he said.

Story by Howard Salkow