Geoff Fincher has made a distinguished contribution to cereal chemistry and the grains industry through his work on the structure, biosynthesis and digestion of plant cell walls. Plant cell walls are the most abundant source of renewable energy on the planet. They play a major role in human and animal nutrition and as sources of biofuels and biopolymers. His work has impacted on all these applications. He discovered many of the enzymes involved in the synthesis and degradation of cell wall polysaccharides of barley, particularly the (1,3;1,4)-β-glucans that have a key role in the brewing industry and human nutrition.