The global demand for wheat is increasing, but so is the distribution and aggressiveness of the pathogens that seriously impact on wheat productivity. The Food Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that wheat production must increase by 60% by 2050 to meet the demand from the growing human population. The fungal pathogens responsible for rust of wheat are a major constraint to achieving this increase in production and in recent years we have seen numerous epidemics due to the breakdown of rust race-specific resistance (R-) genes. There are three rust pathogens of wheat, stripe (yellow-Puccinia striiformis), leaf (brown-P. triticina) and stem (black-P. graminis) rust. In the UK stripe rust is the most prevalent, occurring every year. Leaf rust has been confined to warmer regions, being prominent in the south-west of England. However, in recent years the UK Cereal Pathogen Virulence Survey has detected leaf rust on wheat as far north as the border with Scotland. This is considered to be as a result of milder winters increasing the ability of the pathogen to overwinter, and warmer springs allowing leaf rust to take hold in regions of the UK where previously it has not been considered a problem. In Brazil leaf rust is the major problem. Many sources of leaf rust resistance used in wheat varieties have proven to be race-specific, with virulence rapidly arising in the P. triticina population, overcoming the resistance after only a few years of deployment in new wheat varieties. However, a small number of slow-rusting, adult plant resistance (APR) genes effective against leaf rust have been reported. These include Lr34, Lr46, Lr67 and Lr68. These leaf rust APR genes have proven effective over long periods of time, large acreages and under high disease pressure. Some of these durable, leaf rust APR genes have now been cloned, confirming, as suspected, that they do not function in the same way at race-specific, leaf rust R-genes. The old Brazilian cv. Toropi contains a unique, durable source of leaf rust APR. Preliminary studies have identified two genes in Toropi which account for 71% of the resistance. However these two genes are poorly defined and we know very little about their mode of action, e.g. at what plant growth stages the leaf rust APR becomes effective and whether environmental factors such as temperature can effect the action of these resistance genes In this study we will improve the genetic resolution of each gene by generating a high-density genetic map of Toropi using state-of-the-art DNA marker systems, and wheat genomic resources. We will develop wheat genetic materials that will enable us to unravel the mode of action of each gene, and marker tools that will enable each leaf rust APR gene to be identified and followed during the process of breeding new improved wheat varieties. We also aim to incorporate these Toropi resistance genes into elite Brazilian wheat varieties, using the marker tools we develop, thereby providing the Brazilian wheat breeder with materials they can enter directly into their wheat breeding programs. To help understand the mode of action and biology underlying these leaf rust APR genes we will study the development of the leaf rust fungal pathogen in wheat at the microscopic level, infecting wheat plants at different stages of it growth and when grown at different temperatures. This project also focusses on the training of young Brazilian researchers, and on broadening the international collaborative research network of the Brazilian team.

How does the right to come and go in the city impact on the lives of individuals and communities? Barriers to communication and circulation between neighbourhoods have been linked to diminished self-esteem and decreased social capital and social networks. This project will test this link by studying 1) the relationship between the porosity of internal city borders, self-esteem and resilience and 2) the role of bottom-up social development initiatives in building resilience and enhancing the flexibility of city borders. This will be studied in segregated neighbourhoods (favelas) of three large Brazilian cities: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. A comparative framework between multiple sites furthers understanding of how different built environments and contexts intersect with the psychology and resilience of individuals and communities. At the same time we will identify initiatives of bottom-up social development and study their role in developing resilience and capacity to act on urban frontiers, which, we hypothesise, is an important factor in the quality of urban transformation. The work to be carried out involves building a research partnership between Brazil and the UK through 2 workshops in London and Porto Alegre, which will focus on all elements of preparing and designing the research. We will review the literature connecting social psychology and urban studies and establish the research design. The workshops will draw on previous research of members of the network and bring together colleagues with different expertise on the connections between environments, self-esteem and resilience. It will involve young researchers from both countries, including PhD students. This network will make an important and novel contribution by developing conceptual and empirical links between social and cultural psychology and urban studies.

Mammals share unique characters such as warm bloodedness (endothermy), anterior teeth that replace only once (diphyodonty), three high-frequency sound detecting bones in the ear and a novel jaw joint, enhanced senses, hair or fur, and lactation. The appearance of mammals heralded the replacement of 'ancient' faunas with animals we recognise today including birds, lizards and snakes and the origins of modern terrestrial ecosystems. The traditional view holds that these traits evolved in an integrated fashion, however new data and methods suggest either stepwise or mosaic evolution of traits, challenging our perspective of the evolutionary drivers of mammalian origins. The aim of this proposal is to resolve this problem and determine how, why and when three key mammalian traits evolved: endothermy, diphyodonty, and the jaw joint - middle ear complex. Bony traits such as teeth, jaws and ear bones are recorded in the fossil record. 'Soft' traits such as sensory abilities or endothermy do not fossilize and are inferred from other evidence. In the past 10 years, new fossils and technologies have enriched our understanding but present a complex picture. Current studies date the origins of endothermy to anywhere from the Carboniferous to the Early Cretaceous - a range of nearly 200 million years. Our team have questioned the traditional, textbook narrative of ear and jaw evolution, and whether the closest ancestors of mammals were already warm-blooded. These questions are far from resolved. Furthermore, we lack a thorough perspective as South American fossils closely related to mammal ancestors are yet to be included in quantitative analysis. Moreover, despite data on the development of the jaw and ear in living mammals being pivotal to the mammalian origins debate for decades, we still lack real integration of developmental and palaeontological data in understanding mammalian jaw, ear and tooth evolution. In this proposal we seek to resolve the phylogenetic and temporal basis of the evolution of jaws, ears, teeth and endothermy across the origin of mammals via a multidisciplinary approach that involves: a, working with partners and new fossil data from South America key to understanding mammalian origins; b, integrating the study of fossils and developmental sequence data; c, applying novel methods to deduce 'soft' traits, growth and endothermic potential. We will generate high-resolution X-ray tomography datasets of fossils that span mammalian origins. We will use novel techniques pioneered by our team to count rings in acellular dental cementum, that, like tree rings, preserve the age of an individual fossil and its teeth. This will tell us (a) how old teeth were when they erupted and the pattern and rate of tooth replacement pre- and post mammalian origins, producing a mechanistic model for early mammalian dental evolution. Then, using the number and width of cementum bands, we will (b) determine relative growth rates and use correlates with living animals to ascertain whether transition fossils possess a mammalian or 'reptilian' physiology, resolving the endothermy debate. Finally, we will use developmental sequences of platypus, echidna, opossum and mouse, including mutant c-Fos mice that retain postdentary bones at birth, along with new fossil datasets, to i. establish developmental and evolutionary anatomy; ii. using finite element analysis compare the function of developing joints to the anatomy and function of fossil jaw joints across the origin of mammals. This will tell us whether similar functional constraints and adaptation are at play in the evolution of the mammalian jaw as occur during development. This novel, multidisciplinary and cutting-edge combination of methods and datasets has never been applied to questions of mammalian, or indeed vertebrate evolution. The project will uncover fundamental new insights on the origin of mammals and will set a precedent for future studies of this kind.

The UK PI is Dr Lesley Boyd, NIAB. Boyd has led a research program on wheat-rust interactions for 20 years, being an internationally recognised expert on wheat-rust genetics and biology. Boyd is a member of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) community and actively collaborates with this international community. In 2011 Boyd won the BGRI Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum Mentor Award for her support and mentorship of young female researchers. Boyd has worked for many years with collaborators in Africa, being PI on the BBSRC - SARID project: Assessment of genetic biodiversity of durable disease resistance in African wheat genotypes, leading to the development of novel marker systems for wheat breeding, the BBSRC - SCPRID project: Implementing effective marker technologies into disease resistance wheat breeding programmes within Africa and the BBSRC-Flexible Interchange Program: UK partnership to support the uptake of new crop varieties by smallholder farmers and advancements in agricultural and dissemination technologies. Boyd is co-ordinator of a EU FP7 European Industrial Doctorate PhD Training Program joint with the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands: Max-CROP, and partner in European and International collaborative projects looking at translational aspects of Non-Host Resistance in wheat and barley. The Brazilian PI is Dr Márcia Soares Chaves from Embrapa National Wheat Research Centre. Since 2002 Chaves has led projects that support the Embrapa wheat breeding programs. These research activities cover many aspects of the genetic resistance in wheat to rusts diseases: phenotyping, genotyping, histopathology, development of mapping population and functional genomics, and pathogen epidemiology and population dynamics. Among Chaves main achievements are the selection and in-depth characterization of sources of durable APR to leaf rust adapted to local and regional environments, including the leaf rust APR in Toropi. Many of Chaves research projects are collaborative between Embrapa Wheat and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). At UFRGS Prof. Jose Martinelli plays a significantly role in strengthening the interaction in areas such as plant breeding, plant pathology, genetics, cell and molecular biology. The cooperation between the two institutions led to the registration of the "Research Group on Cereal Rusts" on the CNPq database in 2009, which has its leadership shared by Chaves and Martinelli. Under this cooperation two PhD theses were developed, both aiming to investigate the histopathology of Puccinia x Gramineae interactions, with the goal to better understand the mechanisms involved in resistance of winter cereals to rusts. Chaves and Martinelli are both members of the BGRI. At NIAB the consortium has access to extensive knowledge in wheat-rust genetics and biology, in particular the application of microscopy in the analysis of the biology underlying given wheat genotype-rust race interactions. NIAB has international expertise in wheat trait genetic analyses and genomic selection, and is host to the UK pre-breeding program on synthetic wheat production. NIAB also hosts high-throughput crop transformation, with the wheat transformation platform using the Japan Tobacco protocol. Embrapa Wheat has 284 ha that are used for experimentation and provides ideal conditions for field testing wheat-leaf rust interactions. In the UK leaf rust trials are difficult to carry out because of the presence of yellow rust, the major rust disease of wheat in the UK, which appears naturally in the field before the emergence of leaf rust. Embrapa Wheat also has extensive plant incubation rooms calibrated for wheat-leaf rust infection experimentation. Other members from Embrapa who will be involed in the project are Drs Sandra Brammer and Sandra Mansur Scagliusi. Drs Renata Cruz and Fernanda Bered at UFRGS have recently joined the research consortium.

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