Dr Glynn Percival on a trip to Ontario.
The International Society of Arboriculture’s 2020 L.C. Chadwick Award for Arboricultural Research has been presented to Dr Glynn Percival, Senior Arboricultural Researcher at the Bartlett Tree Research Laboratory in Reading.
The award recognises individuals whose research has contributed valuable information to arboriculture.
Dr Percival’s early research focused on the development of systems arborists could use to detect stress in trees, such as chlorophyll fluorescence, leaf chlorophyll content and electrolyte leakage. Over time, and in collaboration with Barcham Trees and Hansatech Ltd, this led to the development of the Arborcheck, a non-invasive, non-destructive system of quantifying stress in trees that is now routinely used by many practising arborists and consultants.
Dr Percival was also one of the first to recognise the importance of carbon (sugars) rather than nitrogen fertilization to improve tree root rhizosphere environments through, for example, enhancement of mycorrhizal associations to improve transplant survival, as well as to reverse the decline of mature trees.
Over the past few years Dr Percival’s research has focused on soil amendments (biochar, chitin, single-species woodchip mulch) that can be used to promote a tree’s own inherent defence systems to protect against pests and diseases such as ash dieback and acute oak decline. Recently Dr Percival has highlighted the importance of endophytes, i.e. non-harmful fungi and bacteria organisms that live within trees, and the important role they play in protecting trees against acute oak decline and honey fungus.
Editor’s note: Congratulations to Glynn on his a very well-deserved accolade. You can read his latest contribution to the ARB Magazine, co-authored with Sean Graham, on pages 27–31.
This article was taken form Issue 192 Spring 2021 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.