Her research in the field of plant physiology spanned five decades and resulted in over two hundred papers, twenty of which were published in Nature.

[3][4] Her obituary in The Times described her scientific achievements as "legendary";[1] that from the Botanical Society of America attributed her success to "her wonderful intellectual style, combined with her proclivity for remarkable and perceptive experimental findings".

[1] Her PhD on the topic of plant growth regulators was from the University of London at Wye College, Kent, where her supervisor was Ralph Louis Wain.

Her first postgraduate position was in the Department of Biology of the California Institute of Technology, USA, as a Fulbright Scholar, where she worked with botanist Frits Warmolt Went, among others.

[3] In 1991, she moved to the Oxford Research Unit of the Open University at Foxcombe Hall, Boars Hill, where she remained until her death in 2006.

[1][3] Osborne travelled widely during her career, holding short-term positions at Princeton and the California Institute of Technology in the USA, and visiting Argentina, Australia, India, Israel, Malaysia, Nigeria and South Africa.

[8] Among her final research projects was a study of the effects on DNA repair in seeds and pollen of exposure to radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion.

[3][7] Osborne studied a huge diversity of plant species, from the aquatic liverwort to the commercially important African oil palm.