Enhancing Food Productivity
Research conducted by Exeter Food members under this theme encompasses work on how to improve disease resistance, productivity and sustainability in both agriculture and aquaculture, including work on fish and livestock farming without medicalisation. Research in this area also focuses on Open Science and data-intensive agriculture, and on novel food production such as seaweed farming. It also includes work on the historical evolution of subsistence food strategies from pastoralism to agriculture.
Environmental Biologist Eduarda Santos conducts research in aquaculture, and has sequenced the lobster genome to investigate the genetic and epigenetic basis of growth and survival. She is developing treatments for white spot disease in farmed fish using genomics approaches; is working to identify the molecular basis of susceptibility to white spot syndrome virus in farmed crustacea; and is using epigenetics to enhance disease resistance in oysters via immune priming. Robert Ellis, a lecturer in Ecophysiology and Sustainable Aquaculture, has expertise in animal physiology, immunology, metabolomics, developmental biology, ecotoxicology, marine chemistry, climate change ecology and aquaculture, and he is interested in how a mechanistic understanding of animal physiology can be used to improve the productivity and sustainability of aquaculture in a wide range of production settings.
Geographer Katharine Orchel has worked with the Cornish Seaweed Company, and is looking to develop a novel seaweed farming production process with them while also investigating the social impacts of this.
Philosopher and Historian of Science Sabina Leonelli’s work in the area of plant research and agricultural development includes work on data-intensive agriculture, Open Science implementation in agriculture and related plant/crop science, and the implications of these for agricultural strategies worldwide. Sarah Hartley, who lectures in Management, takes a qualitative methodological approach to understand the factors that shape the innovation process for emerging technologies, particularly biotechnologies including GM insects, gene drive, and genome-editing.
Thomas Currie—who is Associate Professor in Cultural Evolution—researches pastoralist food systems, food cultures, and crop productivity; he builds on the idea that the subsistence base that supports societies is a key element of many theories about how and why societies are structured, leading him to create data sets about the history and evolution of different food production systems and quantitative estimates of the productivity of these systems over time. Human geographer Steve Hinchliffe researches production without medicalisation in fish farming and in animal livestock systems
