Welcome To The Kirkhouse Trust
About Us:
The Kirkhouse Trust was set up in September 2000. It is a small Scottish charity (No. SC 030508), funded by gift aid donations from Oxford Gene Technology IP Ltd, a UK company founded by Professor Sir Ed Southern. The Trust has identified "agricultural crop improvement research for the developing world" as its current funding focus.The Trust's main activities centre on grain legumes. The Trust is working with plant breeders in eight countries of West Africa to improve cowpea and in five countries of East Africa to improve the common bean by marker assisted breeding. Within these programmes, the Trust provides support through scholarships, fellowships, for training trips and for attendance at international conferences. The Trust donates equipment and consumables to the participating institutions.
An overarching objective is to strengthen and promote research skills in the developing world, and therefore the Trust is interested in schemes which link research projects with the training of scientists e.g. in modern molecular methods of crop improvement, such as marker assisted selection. In this context, the Trust has funded legume sequencing projects to aid in marker discovery. For example, a 1x 'gene space' sequence of an African cultivar of cowpea was carried out by Orion Genomics and this data is held by the University of Virginia. A similar project is underway for the common bean, led by University of California at Davis.
The Trust funds smaller projects outside its main programmes, but there must be exceptional reasons to support crops other than grain legumes. In addition, the Trust provides small grants for travel to conferences and for short study visits. Please click here for more information and how to apply.
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© 2009 Kirkhouse Trust
Begbroke Science Park, Sandy Lane, Yarnton, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, OX5 1PF, England
Tel: +44 1865 854 851 Fax: +44 1865 854 857
http://www.kirkhousetrust.org
Charity No. 030508
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