International Collaboration is extremely important to our research programmes.

We have been fortunate in receiving funding from the British Council and other organizations for exchange visits.

A major project with Malaysia is described on our Biobanana pages.

A current project with Dr Alain Rival at CIRAD in Montpellier, France, involves oil palm and DNA methylation. It is funded as a British Council - Alliance Programme and started in April 2002. We have developed approaches to isolation of methyltrasferase enzymes critical to epigenetic control of gene expression, particularly with respect to the flowering abnormality in oil palm. Drs James Tregear and  Estelle Jaligot are also involved in the project.

With Professor Thomas Schmidt, University of Dresden, we have a project investigating DNA in sugar beet, its organization and the function. This is under the British Council - ARC research cooperation initiative and started in July 2003..