Horticultural Crop Research (East Malling)

Emma Smith

With a BA (Hons) in business management and a keen interest in horticulture, Emma is part of the glasshouse and ornamental specialist team delivering trials and R&D services for mainly commercial customers of arable, fruit and ornamental and protected crops in the glasshouses.

Emma provides the team with business development, contract management, customer liaison, coordination and technical services for activities including variety trials and variety characterisation, product evaluation trials, nutrition and growing system studies.

Mark Coxeter

Mark Coxeter supports NIAB in his capacity as a private consultant, his primary focus is on intellectual property licensing matters relating to the commercialisation of berry fruits globally.  With 30 years of work experience always within the horticultural/fresh produce industry and a wide network of relevant contacts in the berry industry, Mark works closely with the IP licensing arm of Malling Fruits. 

Dr Michelle Fountain

Research interests

Michelle specialises in the minimisation of pesticide use in fruit horticulture, improving pollination in fruit crops and incorporating modern fruit growing practices with Integrated Pest Management. The former includes research on improving pest monitoring by developing semiochemical manipulation of insects, optimising the use of biological control agents and enhancing and fostering local landscape ecology to provide the ecosystem service of pest control.

Amanda Karlstrom

Research interests

Amanda is a plant breeder, primarily involved in the apple scion breeding through the Apple Breeding Consortium (ABC) at NIAB . She also has involvement in the apple and pear rootstock breeding, predominantly in the trialling of selections and the development of new breeding methods. Amanda’s research interests include quantitative and molecular genetics and she is currently carrying out a part-time PhD studentship focussed on the genetic control of resistance to the pathogen European apple canker, Neonectria ditissima.

Dr Timo Hytönen

Research interests

Timo is working as a principal research scientist at the Genetics, Genomics & Breeding department at East Malling and as an associate professor at the Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the molecular control of reproductive development and environmental adaptation in strawberries using woodland strawberry as a model. His group applies population, quantitative and functional genomic methods to identify key genes and generates transgenic lines to validate gene functions.

Professor Xiangming Xu

Former Head of Science at NIAB’s horticultural centre at East Malling in Kent, Xiangming is responsible for developing and delivering the strategy for research activities across the whole of NIAB. This is in addition to his role in co-ordinating research activities at East Malling.

Dr Eleftheria Stavridou

Research interests

The aim of my research is to understand the nutritional requirements of both annual and perennial production systems and develop “best” management strategies that improve nutrient use efficiency in economically important crops while maintaining and/or improving existing yields and quality. I am also interest to manipulate nutrient supply to enhance secondary plant compounds on fruit and vegetables. To achieve this I study the influence of nutrient availability on phytonutrient biosynthesis, using physiological and molecular biological tools.

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