Amanda Jones, Molecular Mycologist
I joined RBGE in 2023 after a career change sparked by a long-standing interest in fungi. My role spans two main areas: plant health and biosecurity, and molecular support for lichen research. My work is highly varied and continually evolves with the changing needs of the Garden.
A major part of my work is diagnostics of fungal and fungal-like plant pathogens across RBGE and regional gardens, particularly Phytophthora species, which pose a significant threat to botanic collections and natural ecosystems. I carry out morphological and molecular identification, pathogen surveillance, and manage RBGE’s licensed plant pathology lab.
Alongside this, I support lichen biodiversity research at RBGE, primarily using amplicon-based DNA barcoding. British lichens are significantly underrepresented in sequence data, so a key focus of our work is building a public access reference dataset of UK lichen barcodes on the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) platform.