BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today news and current affairs programme will be broadcasting live from Aberystwyth University tomorrow morning.

Presenter Justin Webb will co-present the programme from Aberystwyth Arts Centre on the university’s Penglais campus in front of a live audience of 150 staff, students and local people.

Entry to the event is free and all tickets have been taken but the programme can be heard live on BBC Radio 4 between 6am and 9am on Thursday, or later on BBC iPlayer Radio.

A range of items with university staff and student contributors are expected to feature in the programme, including:

• Dr Gwion Evans from the Department of Mathematics will present the daily puzzle feature at around 6.45am

• Microbiologist Dr Arwyn Edwards from the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences will start a live DNA sequencing test around 6.50am using samples of earth from Mr Webb’s garden and Plas Penglais. The findings will be broadcast live on air shortly before 9am

• The vice-chancellor of Aberystwyth University, Prof Elizabeth Treasure, is due to be interviewed between 7am and 8am

• Dr Fiona Corke from the National Plant Phenomics Centre at IBERS will be discussing the work done at the phenomics glasshouse in Gogerddan, with a particular focus on drought resistance and plants that thrive in low-nutrient environments

• Prof Richard Marggraf Turley from the Department of English and Creative Writing will be interviewed around 8.45am on Shakespeare’s King Lear and the psychotoxic wheat mimicker ‘darnel’ – Latin name ‘Lolium temulentum L’. Resembling wheat, if it wasn’t pulled out and got baked into bread – so called ‘hot bread’ – it made people hallucinate

Kirsty Williams, the Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Education, will also be in Aberystwyth for an interview with Mr Webb.

The programme is also keen to speak to Aberystwyth students and students’ union officers.