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NIAB Board of Directors

	Mr Tony Pexton (Chair) Tony Pexton oversees the operation of a family farm in East Yorkshire where pigs are reared from progeny to bacon and wheat, oilseed rape and vining beans are grown. He was elected to the NFU Council in 1981 and went on to serve as Chairman of the National Cereal Committee from 1987 to 1992 and as Vice-President and Deputy President between 1992 and 2000. Mr Pexton has served on the Council of the Oxford Farming Conference, acting as Chairman in 2002, and as a Board member of Assured Food Standards, and Chairman of the Assured Combinable Crops Scheme. In 2005, he was awarded the OBE for services to agriculture and currently holds office as Chairman of the NIAB Board. In 2007 he was appointed Chairman of the Farmers Club. He was formerly Chairman of the Sustainable Arable Link Research & Development Programme Management Committee for Defra. He is also a Nuffield Scholar (N.Sch) and was Chairman of the Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust from 2008-2009 and he is a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Societies (FRAgs).
	Mr Richard Macdonald Former Director General of the NFU. Currently a Governor of The Royal Agricultural College Cirencester; Trustee, Farm Africa, Chairman of SALSA (Safe and Local Supplier Approval) an independent auditing and certification body for small food businesses; Trustee of the Nuffield Agricultural Trust; Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society, non-Executive director of Moy Park and Director, Bicton Overseas Agricultural Trust. He also chairs DEFRA's Better Regulation Task Force and has recently been appointed as a non-Executive Director for Dairy Crest. Richard was awarded a CBE in Birthday Honours list 2002 for services to agriculture. Hobbies include participation in a number of sports, gardening, local radio broadcasting, and involvement in the East African Wildlife Society.
	Mr Andrew Kuyk Director of Sustainability and Competitiveness, Food and Drink Federation. Directing the resource efficiency programme for food manufacturing sector and leading the FDF aim of putting sustainable food production at the heart of Government economic policy in order to meet the twin challenges of food security and climate change. Awarded CBE in Birthday Honours list 2006 for services to Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
	Mr Geoff Elliott Mr Elliott has been involved in agriculture for over thirty years, and is based in the south of England. He has expanded his business by contract farming and stubble to stubble agreements, to a current business of some 3500 acres, growing combinable crops. Former member of steering group for John Edgar Trust; a charitable trust providing management training for farmers, their sons and daughters, and farm managers in Hampshire and surrounding counties, he still has an active role as a member of their biennial interviewing panel. Founding chairman, and continuing director of Hampshire Training Providers Ltd, a farmer-owned company, formed in 1996 from six training groups (previously co-ordinated by the ATB) to provide agricultural and related training to farmers and other rural businesses. Director of Thames and Kennet Machinery Ring since 2004. Director of Arable Research Centres from 1999 until 2003 when merger with Morley Research Centre formed The Arable Group. Director of TAG since 2003, Chairman 2006 until integration with NIAB in 2009.
	Mr Jeremy Lewis FCA (Chair of Finance Committee) Currently has a mixed portfolio of non executive positions in the commercial and not for profit sectors together with his own Rural Business consultancy. He is a governor of Tudor Hall School and the Royal Agricultural College and is associated with a number of charitable organisations in the UK. Until 2006 he was a partner in the accounting firm Grant Thornton as Head of Agriculture and managing the firm’s business in Oxfordshire. Latterly he was a non exec director of the firm's UK and International Governance Boards. He farms Dexter cattle in Oxfordshire.
	Professor Sir David Baulcombe Professor Baulcombe was awarded a knighthood in June 2009 for his services to plant sciences. He is a British plant scientist and geneticist and is currently Royal Society Research Professor and Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge. Sir David Baulcombe's research interests and contributions to science are mainly in the fields of virus movement, genetic regulation, disease resistance and gene silencing. He serves on several committees and study sections, was elected Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 1997 and was president of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology 2003-2004. In 2007 he became a senior advisor for The Embo Journal, a scientific journal focusing on full-length papers describing original research of general interest in molecular biology and related areas. It is one of the most influential journals in its field. He is co-Editor-in-Chief of ‘Silence’ a new open access journal soon to be launched by BioMed Central, covering all aspects of genetic and epigenetic control that is mediated by RNA. He is a member of the BBSRC Council. His research interests include RNA silencing and protein-based innate immunity mechanisms in plants against pests and disease. He jointly discovered the small interfering RNA that is the specificity determinant in RNA-mediated gene silencing and, with other members of his research group at the Sainsbury Laboratory, he also helped unravel the importance of small interfering RNA in epigenetics and in defence against viruses.
	Dr Richard Summers Dr Summers is the European Cereal Breeding Coordinator for RAGT at their UK offices in Cambridgeshire. He is responsible for wheat, durum, triticale and winter barley breeding programmes, molecular marker, analytics and breeding support teams (based in UK, France, Germany and Czech). He is also responsible for trialling and the development of breeding lines in non-core geographies (Benelux, Nordics, Baltics, central and eastern Europe). Dr Summers is currently a BSPB board member, chair of the BSPB Technical Liaison Committee and R&D Group, and the BSPB-nominated CEL Wheat RL Committee member.

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