As a research group, our aim is to understand how plants interact with other organisms, both above and below ground. Our core focus is trying to understand how parasites find, invade and manipulate crop plant hosts, however are also interested in how plants interact with microbes in the soil. Through a better understanding of the biology underpinning these events, we hope to develop new approaches promote crop plant health, and support the sustainable intensification of agriculture. We use a variety of research tools and approaches to achieve this, including transcriptomics, bioinformatics, reverse genetics, plant transformation, behavioural assays, and a variety of other molecular biology techniques.