I am interested in understanding how plants respond to a changing environment. This involves identifying the individual components present in the intracellular signalling pathways responsible for coupling extracellular stimuli to their characteristic responses. To investigate this I focus on stomata, the pores found on the surfaces of leaves. Environmental signals regulate both stomatal development and the aperture of the stomatal pore and our current interests lie in the regulation of stomatal aperture and development by carbon dioxide, ABA and changes in atmospheric relative humidity.  Most recently I have become interested in the evolution of stomata, in collaboration with Drs James Clark (Bath) and Sandy Hetherington (Edinburgh) and through collaborators in Sri Lanka, Profs Keerthi and Janaki Mohotti, improving the resilience of tea to climate change.