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.
Ben's role within NIAB covers two main areas, that of a technical grower and in business development.
As a FACTS Qualified Advisor (Hort) Ben provides technical growing advice from his base at NIAB’s Park Farm glasshouse facility. He also produces bespoke fertigation systems and oversees the set up of protected/controlled environment facilities for all crops such as ornamentals, fruit, vegetables, cereals and legumes.
Ben's role within business development is to share his previous commercial experience and help develop ideas into actionable trials for NIAB’s customers.
Tally is leading a group in quantitative genetics within the pre-breeding department at NIAB. The group explores statistical genetics, experimental design, and diverse methods of data analysis. Tally works across a range of ongoing research projects in Cambridge Crop Research division and is involved in the analysis and design of a number of diverse and important NIAB wheat collections.
Responsible for the day-to-day running, maintenance, commercial management, and supervision of activities at the WET Centre at East Malling.
BASIS qualified Kate is responsible for coordinating agronomic (fungicide, insecticide, nutrition and PGR) trials focusing on cereals, oilseed rape and pulses. She is also responsible for the contract management of variety oilseed rape trials.
A molecular plant pathologist by training, Aoife has broad ranging experience in crop protection research, agronomy and knowledge transfer in the arable and horticulture crop sectors. Her PhD conducted with Teagasc investigated novel sources of resistance to Septoria tritici in wheat and the model grass species Brachypodium distachyon. She has since held roles in agrochemical regulatory science and as a field vegetable pathologist with ADAS, achieving her BASIS Certificate in Commercial Horticulture in 2018.
Colin has previously worked as a distributor agronomist and a farm manager for a large farm management organisation before moving on to work as Head of Farms for BBSRC, based at Rothamsted Research.
As NIAB's break crop specialist he provides specialist technical and scientific knowledge on the evaluation, selection and management of crop varieties, focusing on break crops including oilseed rape, linseed, pulses, sugar beet and other minor crops. As part of the role he helps coordinate the break crop trials programmes, working with staff across NIAB.
Prof Ji Zhou (周济) is Head of the Data Sciences Department at NIAB. He is an expert in multi-scale plant and crop phenotyping, computer vision (CV) based trait analysis, IoT sensing, and artificial intelligence (AI) modelling. By combining phenotyping, genotyping and environmental data, Ji and his group are developing open-source hardware and software to address yield, quality, and disease related challenges for UK’s key agricultural and horticultural crops such as wheat, Brassica, strawberry, and orchard fruits.
