Grace Corne salutes scientists at Norwich's John Innes Centre for helping protect our precious environment.

Once again there is news of research at the John Innes Centre which has a direct effect on this area of England.

Seventeen years ago a scientist, Martin Rejzek, arrived in Norfolk. It was unlike anywhere he had ever been, but there was one group of people he understood and who welcomed him and that was the Pike Anglers Club. He settled in very well and came to understand and love the area. However the anglers were experiencing real difficulties as many fish were being killed by the alga called Prymnesium parvum. This alga could kill fish within hours but Dr Rejzek was a natural product chemist at the John Innes Centre and he felt he might be able to help.

He discovered the toxin was not only dangerous but there were also signs it might have the capability of being used in medicine and agriculture. However, this was not all he discovered about the algae for some of them were found to be carrying strange 'dots.' When investigated these dots proved to be a virus and it was discovered that it was not the alga alone but the combination of virus and alga which was killing the fish. Could this knowledge be useful?

Research student Ben Wagstaff and colleagues from the UEA experimented and found that the solution lay with a household chemical, hydrogen peroxide. Used at a very low concentration it rapidly cleared the algae from Hickling Broad, consequently saving the lives of many fish. The Environment Agency was delighted as in 2015 one outbreak alone involved a cost of £40,000 to clear.

Professors Hogenhout and Sanders have discovered that plants have the ability to send internal warning signals if they are under attack from aphids. They found that when an insect was feeding on a leaf the plant reacted by sending extra calcium to the damaged area. The plant was thereby warned of an attack and produced a larger amount of calcium within the cells as a defence response. Further work on the understanding of this plant mechanism may help in the future in the prevention of aphid attack and in the elimination of subsequent virus transmission.