Rate My Professor Chungui Lu

Professor Chungui Lu is Professor of Sustainable Agriculture in the School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences at Nottingham Trent University, where he leads the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security Research Group. He obtained his PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Nottingham and his MSc in Plant Science from Yangzhou University. Following his PhD, he held a three-year postdoctoral position at Bangor University and served four years as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, focusing on wheat genomics and nitrogen use efficiency. In 2006, he took up a joint appointment as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University. He also served as Director of Urban Agriculture and Head of the International Centre for Ultra-Sustainable Crops during his time at these institutions. Additionally, he was Director of Urban Agriculture and Head of Future Food Laboratory at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

Professor Lu's research interests encompass sustainable agriculture, plant genomics, vertical farming, controlled environment agriculture, nutrient and energy use efficiency, LED lighting effects on crops, and AI applications in precision agriculture. He leads key projects such as Feeding the Future, which develops vertical growing systems with automated precision controls and LED lights to address global food security challenges from population growth and climate change; Re:grow, aimed at restructuring food production for radical solutions; and studies on subsoil functions and biostimulants for crop resilience. His major publications include 'Plant responses to cold: transcriptome analysis of wheat' (Winfield et al., 2010), 'A review on the effects of light-emitting diode (LED) light on the nutrients of sprouts and microgreens' (Zhang et al., 2020), 'Vertical farming-smart urban agriculture for enhancing resilience and sustainability in food security' (Oh and Lu, 2023), 'Effect of green light on nitrate reduction and edible quality of hydroponically grown lettuce' (Bian et al., 2018), and 'A wheat caffeic acid 3-O-methyltransferase TaCOMT-3D...' (Wang et al., 2018). He has received Innovate UK SMART funding and acted as Guest Editor for a special issue on plant nutrient use efficiency in Genes. Professor Lu has delivered keynote speeches at international conferences and contributed to public engagement through vertical farm produce donations and school outreach.