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Dr Nicholas Cryer

Nicholas leads research on the application of sustainable water management techniques within domestic and public gardens, and the UK horticultural and landscape industry

What do you do?

My work is to research the balance of water supply and demand in gardens and horticulture. This is to improve our understanding of the water demand of diverse types of gardens and different combinations of plants, focusing on how we can provide the right amount of the right quality of water at the right time. 

I also help to deliver on the water targets of the RHS Sustainability Strategy. The central concept is water neutrality, meaning we only use the minimum amount of water that is required, taken from a sustainable source, and we return water to the environment in a useful way. Examples include moving away from mains and river water sources to use rainfall and greywater.  

Increasingly, we are working to achieve impact at scale by influencing the broader landscape through demonstrating how sustainable water management can be positive for people and nature.

“Water is life. The availability of water for plants and gardens provides many essential services, from cooling our air to absorbing air pollution, generating oxygen, and capturing carbon dioxide; all the while supporting our physical and mental wellbeing.”

Why is your team’s research important?

Our world is facing multiple crises, from climate change and the dramatic loss of biodiversity to profound societal and economic upheaval, and gardening can be integral to addressing them.

Gardens and plants are important to our culture, providing a connection with the natural world, promoting our wellbeing, and offering numerous services including air cooling, pollution capture, shade, and shelter. Water is essential for plants and gardens to provide these services.

However, the natural availability of water within our gardens is changing. We are increasingly experiencing the challenges of flood and drought. Additionally, public supply of water by utility companies is becoming restricted, as they also grapple with changing rainfall patterns, an increasing population, and the need to reduce the environmental footprint of water supply and wastewater treatment. 

There are two main things we can do: we can grow different plants that can cope with periods of water excess or deficit, or we can find ways to provide the right environment to enhance water availability so that we can continue to grow the current selections of plants. Change will be required, and I believe we need a bit of both approaches.

My role is to facilitate gardening and horticulture, and all the benefits it brings, by clearly showing how much water is needed to grow different plant combinations in different environments, and by providing knowledge and advice on how we can best provide that water.

Projects I’m working on now

All the projects I am responsible for support the RHS Sustainability Strategy Net Positive for Nature Target 4; to be water neutral by 2030. This target will be achieved through the further development and implementation of the RHS water roadmap. 

RHS Gardens:

  • Using sensors to inform when and how much to irrigate RHS Gardens

  • Building models based on water balance and plant physiology to optimise water use at landscape scale

  • Using greywater to demonstrate and promote alternative water sources for horticulture

Domestic gardens:

Supporting the horticultural industry:

  • Demonstrating best practices in water use at RHS Gardens

Completed projects

Prior to joining the RHS: 

  • Co-authored crop productivity improvement plan for the world’s largest sustainable commercial cocoa farm and promoted change to agricultural operations (find out more)  

  • Deployed water balance models and sensors for decision support of cocoa crop irrigation at large scale

  • Determined the best nutrition and shade environment for rapid cocoa crop establishment

  • CocoaSoils - Integrated Soil Fertility Management. A public-private consortium developing and deploying improved good agricultural practice and crop nutrition guidelines. I supported the establishment of irrigated crop nutrition field trails in Ghana and Indonesia (find out more)

  • Cocoa crop improvement, farms and markets: a science-based approach to sustainably improving farmer food security in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Four PhD student project with Wageningen University and IITA (find out more) 

  • Industry supervisor for ‘Crop management strategies for low asparagine grains to limit acrylamide-forming potential’ BBSRC funded PhD project with Rothamsted Research (find out more) 

Achievements

Prior to joining the RHS:

  • Led plant physiology research and technology qualification supporting large-scale high-tech cocoa farming. Helped to specify the capabilities of a new-build plant science technology centre and developed a research programme defining a fully resourced 5-year set of projects. Plant science subject leader and mentor for eight scientists to build subject expertise, team working ability, scientific rigour, and critical thinking. I am particularly proud of the multi-site field trials testing irrigation and crop nutrition protocols and the transfer of knowledge to farmers

  • Conceived and led projects to transform smallholder farming supply chain in West Africa by coordinating finance, agricultural services, and external funding to overcome barriers to yield improvement with 2500 smallholder farmers, demonstrating a scalable business model

  • Supervised PhD students in various agronomy- and physiology-related subjects

Publications

Selected publications prior to joining the RHS:

  • Oddy, J et al. (2023) Genetic control of grain amino acid composition in a UK soft wheat mapping population. The Plant Genome, 00, e20335. Available at https://doi.org/10.1002/tpg2.20335 

  • Asante, PA et al. (2022) The cocoa yield gap in Ghana: A quantification and an analysis of factors that could narrow the gap’. Agricultural Systems, 201, p. 103473. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2022.103473

  • Oddy, J et al. (2021) Reduced free asparagine in wheat grain resulting from a natural deletion of TaASN-B2: investigating and exploiting diversity in the asparagine synthetase gene family to improve wheat quality. BMC Plant Biology, 21(1), p. 302. Available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-021-03058-7

  • Daymond, AJ et al. (2020) Variation in Indonesian cocoa farm productivity about management, environmental and edaphic factors. Experimental Agriculture, 56(5), pp. 738–751. Available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0014479720000289

  • Wilson, LRM, Cryer, NC and Haughey, E (2019) Simulation of the effect of rainfall on farm-level cocoa yield using a delayed differential equation model. Scientia Horticulturae, 253, pp. 371–375. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2019.04.016

  • Lanaud, C et al. (2017) Deciphering the Theobroma cacao self-incompatibility system: from genomics to diagnostic markers for self-compatibility. Journal of Experimental Botany, 68(17), pp. 4775–4790. Available at https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erx293

  • Cryer, N et al. (2013) Conservation and utilisation of the global cacao genetic resource: the value of the Trinidad collections. Ecological Letters

  • Liberte, B (2012) A global strategy for the conservation and use of cacao genetic resources, as the foundation for a sustainable cocoa economy. Available at https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/105147 

  • Tricker, P et al. (2008) Epigenetic control of stomatal number in response to humidity environment. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology, 150(3, Supplement), pp. S190–S191. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpa.2008.04.518

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The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.