3 December 2019
Dr Christopher P Cockel
Crop Wild Relatives Project Coordinator
Department
Team
Specialism
Crop Wild Relatives, Medicinal Plants, UK Flora, Invasive Species, Red Listing, East Asia, Riparian ecosystems, Urban environments
Biography
My role as Crop Wild Relatives Project Coordinator is to support the development and implementation of seed collecting partnerships in order to deliver plant conservation and the sustainable utilisation of plant resources, with the goal of improving global food security and livelihoods through the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change Project (Crop Wild Relatives – CWR).
The CWR Project is co-managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and is funded by the Government of Norway. Kew’s role is to provide technical support in seed viability and seed longevity; to organise the collection of seed from priority crop wild relatives under-represented in existing genebank collections and to provide samples of material for research and pre-breeding by partners.
Prior to taking on my current role, I worked as the Interim Coordinator of the UK Native Seed Hub at Kew's Millennium Seed Bank. I also worked as a volunteer in the Herbarium at Kew on the Sampled Red List Index Project (SRLI) from 2007-2011.
Qualifications and appointments
- BCom (Upper Second Class Hons.), University of Birmingham, 1994
- MA, Environment and Development (Merit), SOAS, University of London, 1999
- PhD, Queen Mary, University of London 2011
- Member of the Society of Biology
- Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Managemen
Projects
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Adapting agriculture to climate change
Collecting and protecting the wild relatives of the world’s most important food crops to safeguard our future food security in a changing climate.
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Medicinal and aromatic plants of Pakistan
Traditional herbal remedies are still widely used in Pakistan, yet many medicinal plants are threatened by unsustainable levels of harvesting, habitat degradation, climate change and a lack of regulation.
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Global Tree Seed Bank Programme
Conserving some of the world’s rarest, endangered and useful tree and shrub species as well as conducting vital tree conservation research in order to retain a significant resource for humanity.
Selected publications
Cockel C. P., Gurnell A. M. & Gurnell J. (2014).
Consequences of the physical management of an invasive alien plant for riparian plant species richness and diversity.
River Research and Applications 30: 217–229.
Cockel C. & Tanner R. (2011).
Impatiens glandulifera Royle (Himalayan Balsam).
In: A Handbook of Global Freshwater Invasive Species (ed. R.A. Francis). Earthscan, Abingdon, UK. Available online
Cockel C. P. & Gurnell A. M. (2011).
An investigation of the composition of the urban riparian soil propagule bank along the River Brent, Greater London, UK, in comparison with previous propagule bank studies in rural areas.
Urban Ecosystems 15: 367–387.
Cockel, C. P. (2011).
PhD Thesis: Alien and Native Plants of Urban River Corridors: A Study of Riparian Plant Propagule Dynamics along the River Brent, Greater London.
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