Sarah is interested in understanding the interactions between potato agronomy and physiology. She completed her PhD, from the University of Cambridge and funded by CUPGRA, in 2020 on capturing variation in canopy development and understanding how agronomic practices affect canopy growth.
Since then, Sarah has worked on a range of projects ranging from storage work funded by AHDB to commercial product evaluation and an ongoing collaboration with Fibe extracting fibres from potato stems, funded by Innovate UK. She also leads the long-term CUPGRA Reference Crop project, quantifying nitrogen use efficiency in determinate and indeterminate potato varieties under different nitrogen application regimes. This work aims to help growers understand how nitrogen inputs affect crop development and answer the perennial question of “how much nitrogen does this crop need this year?”.
Overall, Sarah’s work aims to equip UK potato growers to reduce resource waste and improve crop quality through a better understanding of potato crop growth. Sarah also established and co-ordinates the CUPGRA Student Network, helping the next generation of PhD students to make connections with the industry their work benefits.
Current research
Cotton alternative from waste potato stems as a novel source of farm savings
Duration: 2024-2026
Partners: Fibe Ltd, GRIMME, East Suffolk Produce
Funders: Farming Innovation Programme, Innovate UK
Investigating nitrogen uptake dynamics in the CUPGRA Reference Crop
Duration: 2023-2027
Funder: CUPGRA
Disrupting potato crop nutrition management using novel photocatalytic technology to reduce fertilizer use and N losses, while removing pollutants from the air.
Duration: 2025-2027
Partners: Crop Intellect Ltd, Branston Ltd, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)
Funders: Farming Innovation Programme, Innovate UK