Professor Jonathan Jones awarded Honorary Doctorate from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

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The Sainsbury Laboratory’s Professor Jonathan Jones, has been appointed Honorary Doctor of Agricultural Science by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

Professor Jones was granted the award for his world-leading and pioneering research specialising in how plants resist disease and in identifying resistance genes in plants, expanding our knowledge on how plant defence systems work.

Over many years Professor Jones’ research group at The Sainsbury Laboratory has worked to understand the interactions between organisms that cause disease and their hosts, and to develop cutting-edge new techniques to identify defence genes in important crops with very large genomes.

Professor Jonathan Jones said; “I’m privileged to have been elected as an honorary doctor at the faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at SLU in Uppsala, but also very aware that this is a testament to the efforts of the many talented and hard-working students and postdocs who came through my lab over the last 29 years, and to the wonderful support The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich has received over this period from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation”.

The SLU is a prominent agricultural university, that works to develop knowledge of the use of natural, biological, land and water resources in a sustainable manner. The award of honorary doctorate is awarded by the faculties at the SLU to those they particularly wish to honour, and highlights that Professor Jones’ research is important both for agriculture and for plant researchers at SLU.