Staff Profile:Professor Tim Wheeler

Name:

Professor Tim Wheeler

Job Title:

Professor of Crop Science

Responsibilities:

• Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser (80%) at the Department for International Development
• Head, Crops and Climate Group

• Deputy Director (sustainable agriculture), Centre of Food Security

Areas of Interest:

I head the Crops and Climate Group of the Walker Institute at the University of Reading. I have more than 20 years' experience of research on how climate affects crops. This has included using novel techniques to examine the effects of carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures on crop plants. My research has been cited in all the major climate change assessments of the last decade: the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Assessments of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and the World Bank Development Report, 2008. In 2005, I gave the prestigious Royal Society Public Lecture in London on 'Growing crops in a changing climate'.

I have been part of Europe-wide projects concerned with the effects of climate change on agriculture in temperate and tropical regions. I have worked in many different global farming systems, including the groundnut crop in the Gambia, the potato-based systems of the mid-altitudes of Bolivia and maize cropping systems in central and south America and in Africa.

• Awarded over £6,400,000 in research contracts in total to date
• Theme Leader for Crop Modelling for the Joint UK Land Exchange Scheme JULES, since 2007
• Principal Investigator in the NERC-National Centre for Atmospheric Science - Climate, since 2006
• Associate Editor of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, since 2007
• Co-organiser of the annual UK Agricultural Modeller's Meeting, since 2005
• Co-author of a Royal Society Statement on Climate Change and Agriculture submitted to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, 2005
• Chair of the University Committee on Postgraduate Research Studies 2004 - 2008, and member of 3 senior committees within the University.
• Regular contributor to BBC national radio news items on climate change and agriculture.

Research groups / Centres:

Crops and Climate Group

Walker Institute

Publications:

I am author of 152 scientific publications since 1991 including 88 in primary international refereed journals. Examples of refereed journal publications in the last five years are:

• Li S., Wheeler T., Challinor A., Lin E., Ju H. and Xu Y. (2010). The observed relationships between wheat and climate in China. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 150 (11), 1412-1419
• Jagadish S.V.K., Cairns J., Lafitte R., Wheeler T.R., Price A.H. and Craufurd P.Q. (2010). Genetic Analysis of Heat Tolerance at Anthesis in Rice. Crop Science, 50 (5). 1633-1641.
• Li S.A., Wheeler T., Challinor A., Lin E., Xu Y. and Ju H. (2010). Simulating the Impacts of Global Warming on Wheat in China Using a Large Area Crop Model. Acta Meteorologica Sinica, 24 (1). 123-135.
• Jagadish S.V.K., Muthurajan R., Oane R., Wheeler T.R., Heuer S., Bennett J. and Craufurd P.Q. (2010). Physiological and proteomic approaches to address heat tolerance during anthesis in rice (Oryza sativa L.). Journal of Experimental Botany, 61 (1). 143-156.
• Yongfang W., Underwood C., Toole G., Skeggs P., Tong Z., Leverington M., Griffiths S., Wheeler T., Gooding M., Poole R., Edwards K.J., Gezan S., Welham S., Snape J., Clare Mills E.N., Mitchell R.A.C. and Shewry P.R. (2009). A novel transcriptomic approach to identify candidate genes for grain quality traits in wheat. Plant Biotechnology Journal 7, 401-410.
• Craufurd P.Q. and Wheeler T.R. (2009). Climate change and the flowering time of annual crops. Journal of Experimental Botany 60 (9), 2529-2539.
• Challinor A.J., Wheeler T., Hemming D. and Upadhyaya H.D. (2009). Ensemble yield simulations: crop and climate uncertainties, sensitivity to temperature and genotypic adaptation to climate change. Climate Research 38, 117-127.
• Osborne T.M., Slingo J.M., Lawrence D.M. and Wheeler T.R. (2009). Examining the interaction of growing crops with local climate using a couple crop-climate model. Journal of Climate 22 (6), 1393-1411.
• Challinor A.J., Wheeler T.R. and others (2009). Methods, skills and resources for climate impacts research. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 90(6), 836-848.
• Challinor A.J. and Wheeler T.R. (2008). Crop yield reduction in the tropics under climate change: processes and uncertainties. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148, 343-356.
• Jagadish S.V.K., Craufurd P.Q. and Wheeler T.R. (2008). Phenotyping parents of mapping populations of rice for heat tolerance during anthesis. Crop Science 48, 1140-1146.
• Challinor A.J. and Wheeler T.R. (2008). Use of a crop model ensemble to quantify CO₂ stimulation of water-stressed and well-watered crops.Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148, 1062-1077
• Challinor A.J., Wheeler T.R., Garforth C.J., Craufurd P.Q. and Kassam A. (2007). Assessing the vulnerability of food crop systems in Africa to climate change. Climatic Change, 83, 381-399.
• Osborne T.O, Lawrence D.M., Challinor A.J., Slingo J.M, Wheeler T.R. (2007). Development and assessment of a coupled crop-climate model. Global Change Biology, 13, 169-183.
• Ogola J.B.O., Wheeler T.R. and Harris P.M. (2007).Predicting the effects of nitrogen and planting density on maize water use in semi-arid Kenya. South African Journal of Plant Science, 24, 51-57.
• Challinor A.J., Wheeler T.R., Craufurd P.Q., Ferro C.A.T. and Stephenson D.B. (2007). Adaptation of crops to climate change through genotypic responses to mean and extreme temperatures. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 119, 190-204.
• Kalorizou H.A, Gowen S.R. and Wheeler T.R. (2007).Genotypic differences in the growth of bananas (Musa spp.) infected with migratory endoparasitic nematodes. 1. Roots.Experimental Agriculture, 43, 331-342.
• Kalorizou H.A., Gowen S.R. and Wheeler T.R. (2007). Genotypic differences in the growth of bananas (Musa spp.) infected with migratory endoparasitic nematodes. 2. Shoots. Experimental Agriculture, 43, 343-352.
• Bergamaschi H., Wheeler T.R., Challinor A.J., Comiran F., Heckler B.M. (2007). Relationships between maize yield and rainfall on different temporal and spatial scales in subtropical Southern Brazil. Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira, 42, 603-613.
• Toole G.A., Wilson R.H., Parker M.L., Welllner N.K., Wheeler T.R., Shewry P.R., Mills E.N.C. (2007). The effect of environment on endosperm cell-wall development in Triticum aestivum during grain filling - an infrared spectroscopic imaging study. Planta, 225, 1393-1403.
• Jagadish K., Craufurd P.Q., Wheeler T.R. (2007). High temperature stress and spikelet fertility in rice (Oryza sativaL.). Journal of Experimental Botany, 58, 1627-1635.
• Teh C.B.S., Simmonds L.P. and Wheeler T.R. (2006).Modelling the partitioning of evapotranspiration in a maize-sunflower intercrop. Malaysian Journal of Soil Science, 6.
• Hansen J., Challinor A., Ines A., Wheeler T., Moron V. (2006). Translating climate forecasts into agricultural terms: advances and challenges. Climate Research, 33, 27-41.
• Challinor A.J., Slingo J.M., Wheeler T.R. and Doblas-Reyes F.J. (2005). Probabilistic simulations of crop yield over western India using the DEMETER seasonal hindcast ensembles. Tellus. 57A, 498-512.
• Challinor A.J., Wheeler T.R., Slingo J.M., Grimes D.I.F. (2005). Simulation of crop yields using the ERA40 re-analysis: Limits to skill and non-stationarity in weather-yield relationships. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 44, 516-531.
• Slingo J.M., Challinor A.J., Hoskins B.J., Wheeler T.R. (2005). Introduction: Food crops in a changing climate. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 360, 1983-1989.
• Challinor A.J., Wheeler T.R., Slingo J.M., Hemming D. (2005). Quantification of physical and biological uncertainty in the simulation of the yield of a tropical crop using present day and doubled CO₂ climates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 360, 2085-2094.
• Ogola J.B.O., Wheeler T.R. and Harris P.M. (2005). Water use of maize crops in response to planting density and irrigation. South African Journal of Plant and Soil, 22, 116-121.
• Lodwig E.M., Leonard M., Marroqui S., Wheeler T.R., Findlay K., Downie J.A. and Poole P.S. (2005). Role of polyhydroxybutyrate and glycogen as carbon storage compounds in pea and bean bacteroids.Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, 18, 67-74.
• Wheeler T.R., Challinor A.J., Slingo J.M., Grimes D.I.F., Craufurd P.Q. (2005).Forecasting the harvest:from proverbs to PCs.The Biologist. 52, 45-50.
• Challinor, A. J., Wheeler T.R., Slingo J.M., Osborne T.M. (2005). Climate variability, climate change and crop productivity in the tropics. Outlooks on Pest Management 16, 71-74.

Key earlier papers

• Wheeler T.R., Craufurd P.Q., Ellis R.H., Porter J. R. and Vara Prasad P.V. (2000). Temperature variability and the yield of annual crops.Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 82, 159-167.
• Wheeler T.R., Hong T.D., Ellis R.H., Batts G.R., Morison J.I.L. and Hadley P. (1996). The duration and rate of grain growth, and harvest index, of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in response to temperature and CO₂. Journal of Experimental Botany, 47, 623-630.
• Wheeler T.R., Morison J.I.L., Ellis R.H. and Hadley P. (1994). Effects of CO₂, temperature and their interaction on the growth and yield of carrot (Daucus carota L.). Plant, Cell and Environment, 17, 1275-1284.

Qualifications:

BSc, MSc, PhD

The next two films in the University of Reading Research Showcase series

The effects of climate change on crops

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/research/researchshowcase/climatechange/res-climateoncrops.asp

One of the major challenges of climate change is to use climate models to help us predict the effect on food crops in the future. We need to assess how changes in temperature and rainfall will affect the productivity of our food crops. We also need to consider how the variability of climate will alter, and look at how we can forecast this. How can agriculture adapt to offset the negative effects of climate change, and make the most of any opportunities which might occur

The effects of crops on climate change

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/research/researchshowcase/climatechange/res-cropsonclimate.asp

We spend a lot of time thinking how climate can affect crops but crops affect climate themselves. A substantial amount of the lands surface is used for crop and agricultural production: how we use that land can affect our climate. Altering the characteristics of the land's surface can alter the way in which water and heat flows from the land's surface to the atmosphere and back, and if this is a large enough change, it can ultimately affect the regional climate.