Professor Jonathan Jones awarded the 2025 Wolf Prize in Agriculture

The NRPDTP team celebrate the outstanding achievement of Professor Jonathan Jones, one of our supervisors and Group Leader at The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) who has been awarded the 2025 Wolf Prize in Agriculture along with Professors Jeffery L. Dangl and Brian J. Staskawicz “for groundbreaking discoveries of the immune system and disease resistance in plants.”

Their discoveries, including the first cloning of plant resistance genes and the identification of immune receptors, laid the foundation for targeted strategies to combat plant pathogens.

Jonathan commented, “The Sainsbury Lab on the Norwich Research Park has been a fantastic location for a research career. Many thanks to my wonderful colleagues at TSL, our greater research community, and our many outstanding advisory board members (two of whom are my cohonorees) that have enabled TSL to become an incredible engine of discovery.

Crop diseases claim up to 30% of the global harvest each year and controlling them sustainably is critical for food security. The Wolf Prize in Agriculture 2025 recognises the contributions of three exceptional scientists whose work has been critical to our understanding of plant immunity. We now have the knowledge to develop durably disease resistant crops, which will be of huge benefit to humankind.

I am also pleased that Professor Brian Staskawicz and Professor Jeff Dangl, who have served on our advisory board, have also been recognised for their outstanding contributions.”

The Wolf Prize recognises outstanding contributions that have significantly advanced knowledge and innovation in the field. It’s the ninth Wolf Prize in Agriculture for the UK and the third for Norwich Research Park.

In 2010, Sir David Baulcombe, one of TSL’s first senior scientists was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture “for pioneering discovery of gene regulation by small inhibitory RNA molecules in plants” and in 2020, Dame Caroline Dean from the John Innes Centre was awarded for “for pioneering discoveries in flowering time control and epigenetic basis of vernalization.”

The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) is committed to the highest standards of fundamental and applied scientific research into molecular plant-microbe interactions. TSL favours daring, collaborative, long-term research and values scientific integrity through open science and transparency.

The Wolf Prize, awarded annually since 1978, is one of the world’s most prestigious scientific honours, recognising exceptional contributions in Medicine, Agriculture, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics.