Dr John B Dickie
Senior Research Leader
As Research Leader and Assistant Head of the Collections Department, I manage and lead both the Seed Collections section, based at the Millennium Seed Bank, and the Laboratory-based Collections section, based largely in the Jodrell Laboratory. I am responsible for: the quality of the collections themselves, which consist of living seeds, DNA and microscope slides of leaves, wood, pollen and flowers; and the quality and availability of the data associated with them. The utility of the collections for research depends on maximising their availability, especially by digitising them wherever practicable and integrating them and their associated data with all of Kew’s collections.
My own research is focused on the analysis of data from large, but often imperfect datasets to provide information that helps to answer both important biological questions and give decision support for collection management operations.
- BA (Hons), Univ. Lancaster, 1973
- PhD, Univ. Cambridge, 1977
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Banana Bunchy Top Virus Mitigation
Community management in Nigeria, and screening wild banana progenitors for resistance.
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Activated Genebank Network (AGENT)
Establishing a global genebank network to sustainably unlock the genetic diversity of food crops for future generations and make them intuitively accessible for modern breeding programmes
Stahl, U., Kattge, J., Reu, B., Voigt, W., Ogle, K., Dickie, J. & Wirth, C. (2013).
Whole-plant trait spectra of North American woody plant species reflect fundamental ecological strategies.
Ecosphere 4: 1-28.
Smith, P., Dickie, J., Linington, S., Probert, R. & Way, M. (2011).
Making the case for plant diversity.
Seed Science Research 21: 1-4.
Moles, A. T., Ackerly, D. D., Webb, C. O., Tweddle, J. C., Dickie, J. B., Pitman, A. J. & Westoby, M. (2005).
Factors that shape seed mass evolution.
PNAS 102: 10540-10544.