Fera Logo   National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria National Collection Of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria

 
    NCPPB STAFF
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    John Heeney, Curator
John Heeney joined Fera (formerly CSL) in 1999 to assist with the diagnosis of plant diseases of statutory importance to the UK. John is currently a member of the Pest & Disease Identification team. He is responsible for the day to day maintenance of the culture collection, manages all sales, deals with customer enquiries, and much of the administration. John was trained in the 'Preservation and Maintenance of Micro-Organisms and Animal Cell Cultures' at CABI Bioscience UK Centre in 2001. Since 2002, John was heavily involved with obtaining UKAS accreditation for rapid accurate identification of bacterial plant pathogens by Fatty Acid Profiling and also became Deputy Technical Manager for Fatty Acid Profiling (FAP). He teaches visiting scientists, PhD students, and Fera staff the techniques involved with FAP and assists with diagnosis using this technique when required. He is also responsible for maintenance, troubleshooting, and repairs to the equipment used in the procedure. John is fully trained in IATA regulations covering the 'Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods in Division 6.2 Infectious Substances & Related Items of Class 9 by Air' and is a COSHH risk assessor within CSL. He trained staff in setting up a National Culture Collection in Georgia - Former Soviet Union.
 
    Dave Stead, Director
David Stead became curator of the NCPPB in 1981 following on from Pauline Roberts and Ron Lelliott. After many years as curator, David has handed over this role and is is now responsible for some long term policies because of his role as a consultant bacteriologist and his leadership of research on plant pathogenic bacteria at Fera. He will thus assume a new, less time consuming role as NCPPB director. Some things have changed very little in 21 years. We still use the same method for freeze drying. Perhaps the major changes have come in methods for bacterial identification and for quality control of the cultures we conserve. David pioneered the use of fatty acid profiling for rapid accurate identification at species level, which we still use, and more recently the use of repetitive sequence PCR and AFLP fingerprints for characterisation at sub specific and even strain level