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Dr Lorna Mcausland is a plant scientist in our School of Biosciences at the 糖心原创. She specialises in investigating the dynamic responses to stress and heat in wheat, developing new techniques that help us grow crops that can survive changing temperatures and support global food security.
Dr Lorna Mcausland is a Research Fellow in Plant and Crop Sciences at our School of Biosciences. As an early career scientist Lorna has achieved outstanding merit in her field, with her from the Society for Experimental Biology demonstrating this. In this Take 10, Dr Mcausland talks about her inspirations and career journey with us through ten questions.
I explore how plants respond to heat, most recently my research has focused on warmer nights. "Warmer nights" research examines how crops respond to changing environmental conditions, particularly rising night-time temperatures as a result of climate change.
Higher temperatures threaten the productivity of our crops, reducing their yields and making them more vulnerable to other stresses such as drought. Current research suggests that night-time temperatures have a greater impact on our crops than previously thought, however we haven't been able to understand how or why. My research addresses this knowledge gap in our most grown crop plant globally, wheat.
Climate change is accelerating, bringing warmer weather which negatively impacts our global crop yields leading to food insecurity. My research focuses on investigating underutilised physiological sources of crop resilience; for example the contribution of non-leaf sources to yield under heat and developing mechanisms which improve plant survival under warmer nights.
When we think about heatwaves, we tend to only think of hot, sunny days.
Plant behaviours associated with night-time conditions are substantially under-explored compared to daytime physiological processes such as photosynthesis. Monitoring conditions or physiological responses to darkness requires innovative thinking.
Similarly, measuring non-leaf structures requires the development and, or the application of new technologies to investigate processes we have taken for granted in the physically, more simple leaves.
Outside of academia, my research is primarily of interest to breeding companies (most notably wheat), however my nocturnal research has also been included in national press focusing on the anthropogenic impact of warmer nights, especially in cities.
In 2022, I was awarded a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship to begin my independent research journey with wonderful support from colleagues. Between 2024 and 2026, I have been included in academic publications and listed as a co-investigator on 12 funding applications for the Gates Foundation, UKRI (BBSRC, EPSRC) and Leverhulme.
I have also served as a keynote speaker at five national and international conferences and contributed as a speaker and panellist to national initiatives, including Designing Sustainable Wheat (DSW) and Women In Wheat.
This year, I was honoured to have won the Presidents Medal in the Plant Section.
Prior to my fellowship I worked with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) (e.g. (CIMMYT) and breeding companies (, In addition, I collaborate with the Dutch company Fytagoras to support the development of their seed screening technologies. I also proactively apply for Council for Advancement and Support of Education studentships and Doctoral Landscape Awards (DLA).
One of the big questions arising from my work right now is "what happens to water at night?"
Our nights are warming at 1.7x the rate of our days and last year in the UK, we experienced our first ever incidence of a tropical night. One of the big questions I'd like to tackle is "how this is impacting water availability to our crops"? How does this switch in nocturnal environment change how plants respond during the day?
These research questions not only form the basis of large-scale programme into researching plant physiological responses at night, but also ask broader questions about how much we know about the night-time environment and how it is being impacted by climate change.
I am currently outlining an application for a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship - I envision this fellowship as the first step in widely promoting research on our understanding of nocturnal plant physiology for improved climate resilience.
Personal barriers include confidence in speaking, communication of research to certain audiences and application writing. These three things truly only get better with practice. Speaking at conferences, being a guest speaker and even contributing in larger group meetings all help in bridging these barriers.
Putting yourself out there can be intimidating but the more you do, the better you become (even if the nerves stay the same!). For applications, what's helpful is to not be afraid to ask for successful examples and feedback - some people tend to give me a lot, some will only give a little but this all contribute to improving my skills.
Identify your allies and mentors, talk with them about your ideas. These discussions form the basis of idea development, feasibility and build confidence. Once you have the idea, communicating this idea well is critical to developing collaborations, successfully gaining funding and creating impact with results.
Identify your allies and mentors, and talk with them about your ideas.