AN Aberystwyth undergraduate student who harvested CT scan technology for a pioneering wheat study has been granted a bursary for his work.

The pioneering new technique using CT scanning technology commonly found in hospitals has been developed by undergraduate computer science student Nathan Hughes to extract information from 3D images of wheat grain heads.

His work will help scientists to develop new types of wheat which can thrive in a changing climate.

Nathan has now won a Genetics Society Summer Studentship to develop the technique after recently completing a year’s industrial placement at Aberystwyth University’s National Plant Phenomics Centre.

The eight-week bursary is worth up to £2,500 and will see him spend the summer working at Aberystwyth’s Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Science (IBERS).

There, Nathan will apply the CT scanning technology to study how plants fulfil their growing potential according to their genetic makeup.

Initially, Nathan developed the technique to measure the effects of different watering and heat regimes on wheat yield.

Using the popular Raspberry Pi computers and free open source software to drive an irrigation system and a series of weighing scales, Nathan was able to vary the amount of water given to individual plants and record their weight gain.

The new technique developed by Nathan enabled the team to analyse 200 wheat grain heads in an hour – approximately 3,000 individual grains of wheat.

The findings were also compared with traditional grain study techniques and found to be 97 per cent accurate.

Nathan said: “I’m very pleased to have been awarded a Genetics Society Summer Studentship. Coming from a strong computer science background, I feel that I can bring a unique viewpoint to some of the current questions in plant-science."

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