Vanessa Nessner Kavamura

Vanessa’s interests relate to the rhizosphere, the plant-soil interface, rich in nutrients and signalling molecules released by plants. Root exudates can attract and allow microbes to grow and, in turn, microbes can benefit the host plant through growth promotion and abiotic and biotic stress protection. Before Rothamsted Research, Vanessa studied phytoremediation of soils contaminated by heavy metals during her Master’s degree and, for her PhD at the University of Sao Paulo, she focused on bioprospecting rhizosphere bacteria from cacti, found in a unique Brazilian biome, for plant growth promotion under drought stress. She also studied the effects of dry and rainy seasons on bacterial community structure, using T-RFLP and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing with the ion torrent platform. During her postdoc in Brazil at Embrapa Environment, she coordinated a work package within the project “Prospecting biological control agents and natural products for wheat blast management in Brazil”, working with a 16S rRNA amplicon approach to determine wheat-associated bacterial communities and their correlation to wheat blast incidence. Vanessa has recently joined the molecular microbial ecology team to explore wheat rhizosphere microbiome composition and function. The aim is to identify the potential of optimising beneficial microbial interactions of wheat for sustainable production.