Tina Barsby

Tina is President of CUPGRA and Honorary Professor of Agricultural Botany at the University of Cambridge.  She retired as Director and CEO of NIAB in September 2021, after 15 years of service. Prior to that, for 18 years, she worked for the Limagrain Group.  Tina was awarded the OBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List for services to agricultural science and biotechnology. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science by Bangor University in August 2022.

Currently, she chairs the Agricultural Advisory Board of Future Biogas, and she is Scientific and Agricultural Advisor to G’s Growers. She also chairs the British Farm Data Council, and is committed to Fenland SOIL which exists to provide farmers with a mosaic approach to reducing GHG emissions.

James Lee

James Lee – Head of Agronomy (Greenvale - Produce Solutions)
James was brought up on the family potato and vegetable farm in the West Midlands, and gained an Hons. Degree in Crop Protection from Newcastle University. He spent 12 years as a broad-acre agronomist before joining Greenvale as a Senior Potato Agronomist in 2001.   James has subsequently had 23 years of potato supply chain experience across fresh retail and processing sectors – working in many technical and management roles. James is currently Head of Agronomy for Greenvale, managing the Produce Solutions team which provides potato agronomy consultancy and commercial trials solutions.  James is a director of CUPGRA and sits on the Red Tractor Fresh Produce Board.

Carl Rosen

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

​Carl Rosen is a Professor and Extension Soil Scientist in the Department of Soil, Water, & Climate at the University of Minnesota. He received BS and MS degrees in Horticultural Science from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. degree in Soil Science from the University of California, Davis.  His research and extension programs in Minnesota have focused on optimizing nutrient management for a variety of crops with particular emphasis on irrigated potato cropping systems. Efforts in recent years have also focused on water quality issues related to fertilizer use and use of municipal and industrial by-products as amendments for agricultural soils.  He has authored or coauthored numerous publications and extension bulletins on the subjects of nutrient management, soil fertility, soil health, plant nutrition, and beneficial use of by-products for crop production.

Jim Monaghan

Jim Monaghan is the Professor of Crop Science at Harper Adams University having worked in crop science for 30 years.  Following a Biology degree at UCNW Bangor, Jim researched aspects of crop production at Harper Adams University College and John Innes Centre (PhD), Newcastle University, HRI-Efford and HRI-Wellesbourne.  Jim then had a look at the real world for three years at Marks and Spencer as Salads Technologist, where he had responsibility for food safety, pesticide residue minimisation, and compliance with codes of practice for all salad products and salad ingredients in minimally processed foods, before heading back to Harper Adams to develop teaching and research in the area of fresh produce production in 2005.

Jim is now the Director of the Centre for Crop and Environmental Science at HAU.  The centre brings together researchers and PhD students who are focussed on both understanding fundamental processes and translating them to applied solutions to the wide range of challenges regarding soil, water, nutrition, pests and diseases, and how they are affected by climate change and farming systems. His personal research group has expertise in crop physiology and phenotyping and has received funding from AHDB, BBSRC, Defra, Innovate UK, NERC and businesses including G’s Fresh, PepsiCo & Syngenta.  Jim is also involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and knowledge exchange in the areas of crop production and postharvest management at HAU.  He has supervised 11 PhD students to completion and is currently supervising 6 PhD students. Away from HAU, Jim chaired the Technical Advisory Committee for Red Tractor Produce from 2010-17 and is a member of the BBRO Technical Committee. 

Joseph Mhango

Joseph is a Senior Lecturer of applied data science at Harper Adams University (HAU). He earned his PhD from HAU in 2022, where he investigated the potential of remote sensing in mapping soil and crop variability relevant to tuber yield and size. This AHDB-funded research introduced AI methods for plant density mapping, predicted marketable yield from satellite imagery, produced new methods for evaluating tuber size distribution and explored soil conductivity’s impact on potato yield. After his PhD, Joseph worked with Crop4Sight, developing satellite-based groundcover models, tuber sizing, and yield modelling applications, among others. He then worked with Solynta, developing various end-to-end sensor-based phenotyping applications relevant to breeding and advanced genomic selections. Building on over eight years in the CGIAR (IITA) in agronomy roles, supported by a BSc in Agronomy and an MSc in Soil Science, he now operates at the intersection between potato physiology, remote sensing, AI, and data science, bringing this knowledge to bear on the goal to “Understand how potatoes grow”.

Debbie Winstanley

Debbie has a BSc (Hons) in Agriculture from the University of Wales, is a Governor of Harper Adams and a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society. Debbie was a commercial farm agronomist in the NW of England for 20 years before working on potato agronomy at Cambridge University Farm. Debbie has worked for Co-op Retail and Sainsbury’s in Technical Management for Fresh Produce and was the UK Agronomist for PepsiCo. She sits on the steering group of the Allerton project, a charity which champions biodiversity and PRIF, the UK Government’s Expert Committee for Pesticide Residues in Food, is a lead for Women in Food and Farming and is a Director of CUPGRA and Chair of the CUPGRA R and D sub-committee.

Tom Astill

Tom is a market development representative for Bayer CropScience, responsible for co-ordinating trials and knowledge transfer for Bayer’s plant protection products in potato and horticultural crops. A growing focus of his role is technical support for bio-pesticides. 
After graduating with a BSc Agriculture from Newcastle University in 2019, Tom joined Bayer as trainee later that year, becoming a commercial technical manager for the North West and then the East Midlands. He is BASIS and FACTS qualified.
Tom is also a member of the CUPGRA knowledge exchange team.

Richard Baker

Richard is Managing Director of HZPC UK Limited, a subsidiary of HZPC Holland BV. HZPC is a global market leader in innovative breeding, seed potato production and is a pioneer in Hybrid Breeding. He has been in the seed potato business since 1986. Throughout this time he has had a keen focus on new variety development and the commercial introduction of varieties that add value to the supply chain. His 1985 college thesis was on using microplant production to shorten field generations in the seed multiplication program. The circle was completed when HZPC UK bought TLC Potatoes, a minituber production facility in Scotland in May 2023. “High health seed potatoes of value added varieties, have been my business life for nearly 40 years”, says Richard

Judith Batchelar

Judith has worked in the food and drink industry for 40 years in manufacturing, retailing, and from 2004 to 2021 as Director of Sainsbury’s Brand driving the Product Quality and Innovation agendas along with Corporate Responsibility, Sustainability, and Public Affairs.

Today Judith is Deputy Chair of The Environment Agency, Chair of MicroSalt and The Rugby Players Association, a Non-Executive Director of Monaghan Mushrooms and Daemon, a Trustee of The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and an ambassador for Farm Africa and the Woodland Trust.

Judith is a Biochemist, nutritionist, has an Honorary Doctorate in Agriculture from Harper Adams University, she is an Associate of the Royal Agricultural Societies, Honorary President of the British Nutrition Foundation, and a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), the Royal Society of Arts and Manufactures (RSA) and a liveryman at The Worshipful Company of Butchers.

From 2013 to 2018 she co-chaired of the Governments’ AgriTech Council and today she co-chairs Defra’s Food Data Transparency Partnership Eco group. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 for services to Farming and the Food Industry, and is a Commissioner on the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and The Harper Commission into the Future of UK Food.

Adrian Cunnington

Adrian has worked in potato storage since the mid-1980s.

He joined the team at the UK’s specialist potato storage research centre at Sutton Bridge when it was run back then by the Potato Marketing Board as a junior technician. He became Head of Site in the 1990s and remained in post under the British Potato Council, and subsequently the AHDB, until it was closed following the collapse of the UK’s potato levy system in 2021.

Over those three decades Sutton Bridge was at the forefront of research and knowledge transfer to the UK industry and also developed a strong reputation carrying out dedicated contract research for private clients from around the world. Adrian spent much of his time in recent years developing programmes for best practice development for growers and store managers. He co-authored the first Potato Store Managers’ Guide back in 2001 and wrote the most recent, third edition for AHDB in 2019.

Adrian was closely involved in the European Association for Potato Research for many years, chairing or co-chairing the Post-Harvest Section from 2006-2014. He first presented at World Potato Congress in 2006 in Idaho and was part of the organising team for the 2012 event in Edinburgh. He was also invited to speak on storage at the WPC in 2022 (Dublin} and 2024 (Adelaide).

After the loss of Sutton Bridge, Adrian established Potato Storage Insight as an all-encompassing consultancy on potato storage. PSI places a lot of focus on training to pass on key skills including an annual residential potato store managers course and BASIS Stored Potatoes. He continues to troubleshoot storage issues and advises on best practice and storage optimisation.

Adrian was a member of the CIPC Stewardship Group in the UK from 2008-2020, co-ordinating the managed retention of the sprout suppressant chemical until its withdrawal in 2020. He is now chair of the CIPC Residues Monitoring Group submitting data to CRD on residues in previously treated stores. He now works closely with many of the new products which have been adopted in its place.

Sarah Roberts

Sarah is a research associate focusing on crop development and physiology at NIAB. She was awarded her PhD funded by CUPGRA from the University of Cambridge 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 AHDB storage projects examining the effects of storage regimes on agronomy, optimising MH tuber residue levels, and comparing inherent dormancy between varieties. She now 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.

Harry Barnett

​I reside on the Holkham estate in North Norfolk where I am a director of a specialist potato growing business growing retail, seed and processing crops for UK and export markets. I have been with the business for over a decade after graduating from Newcastle university where I studied Agri-business management. I have recently completed a Nuffield scholarship looking at how the UK potato industry can counteract the market and agronomic challenges it currently faces and hope to share some of my findings across the UK potato sector.

John Bubb

Since graduating from Wye College in 1998 John has been at the family business J M Bubb & Son LLP based near Newport, Shropshire.  Growing 2000 acres of arable crops including Wheat, OSR, Potatoes and flowers for drying.  Farming with his brother Jim they also run a successful dried flower business, Shropshire Petals selling natural biodegradable products worldwide with four different brand names.  Alongside this the flower field open to the public attracted 14,000 people in 2024. Processing Potatoes for McCain supplying from September through to May.  Moving towards regenerative systems since 2020 utilising strip tillage, living mulches, cover crops, companions, CTF and a mindset change in products used, focussing on soil health.