Potato Physiology Research Specialist - Sarah Roberts

My role at Niab

I am Niab’s Potato Physiology Research Specialist, practically this means designing, managing and analysing a wide range of experiments which aim to understand the effects of agronomy on potato growth in the field. I have a particular interest in understanding nitrogen uptake and nitrogen use efficiency to help growers manage their N use optimally. Quite often this involves monitoring potato growth in response to new products (be they for crop protection, fertilisers, biostimulants or something else) and can involve more than just assessing impact on potato yield and quality.

Recently this has included asking more in-depth questions about how the products reduce (or not!) the carbon footprint of the crop or assessing what proportion of the yield potential was achieved.

My role involves a mixture of advising on our trials for commercial customers, running UKRI industry research collaborations and experiments for CUPGRA (a group of scientifically minded potato growers and members of the wider industry). An increasing portion of my job is designing projects and putting together bids to run research projects. Then at the other end of the project, I analyse and communicate the experimental results to funders and the potato industry more widely.