Professor Janet Sprent

Following completion of 8 years (maximum allowed) as Trustee of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, I have been appointed a Research Associate there, where I will continue my collaborative research with members of their staff. My major research collaborations now are at JHI, University of Cape Town and the Centre for Rhizobium Studies at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, but in all of these we have international colleagues.

A major project is to put my decades of study into nodulation of legumes into an interactive database ILDON (Interactive Legume Database of Nodulation)

A new species of nitrogen fixing bacterium nodulating a drought tolerant perennial legume being developed for use in the poor soils of the arid wheat belt of Australia was named after me. Burkholderia sprentiae sp.nov., isolated from Lebeckia ambigua root nodules (2013) Sofie E.De Meyer, Margo Cnockaert, Julie K.Ardley, Garth Maker, Ron Yates, John G.Howieson and Peter Vandamme. International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 63, 3950-3957