Download Brian Forde is currently Professor of Environmental Plant

Prof. Brian Forde is a plant molecular geneticist who obtained his BSc (Hons) in
Botany and a PhD in Plant Biochemistry at the Queen’s University of Belfast, N.
Ireland. His postdoctoral research was at the University of Innsbruck, Austria and
then at the University of Edinburgh, UK. For 20 years he was a research scientist
at Rothamsted Experimental Station (now Rothamsted Research) in Harpenden,
UK. In 1980 he was responsible for establishing the first recombinant DNA facility
at Rothamsted, one of the first such facilities for plant research in the UK. Initially
his research was focussed on cloning genes for seed storage proteins in wheat
and barley. Later work concerned the molecular genetics of the pathway of
ammonium assimilation in legumes, the first identification of genes for nitrate
transporters in roots and the first demonstration that root architecture is regulated
by nutrient signalling. He has published over 100 research papers, reviews and
book chapters. In 1999, he was appointed to his current post as Professor of
Environmental Plant Biotechnology at Lancaster University.
At Lancaster, Brian teaches genetics, molecular and cell biology and plant
science. His current research interests focus on the genetic control of root
architectural responses to soil nutrients, particularly nitrate and glutamate. He is
the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Plant Methods and is currently a Member of
the ‘Faculty of 1000’ and on the editorial boards of Plant, Cell and Environment
and Frontiers in Plant Genetics and Genomics. He is a member of the Society of
Experimental Biology and the American Society of Plant Biologists. In 2011 he
was elected a Fellow of the Society of Biology.