Richard Richards is the world leader in the use of physiological traits in the breeding of crop plants. The approach developed by him is now being used widely internationally. It integrates physiological understanding of what determines grain yield in drought-prone environments with the understanding of the molecular and genetic bases of influential physiological traits. It has therefore enabled a much more effective, targeted use to be made of bioinformatics in breeding crops for such environments, and has resulted in the release of several radically new varieties of wheat.