John completed his PhD in 2004 at the University of Nottingham. He was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2011 with the School of Plant Biology at University of Western Australia, Perth. He has since returned to the UK to take up his current post in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development and the Centre for Food Security at the University of Reading. He is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology and a Consulting Editor for Plant and Soil.