James Hutton Limited

Creosote is a tar-based wood preservative used to protect utility poles, but it is also an environmental contaminant that can leach into soil and water, posing serious health and ecological risks. The UK energy network utilises creosote-treated poles for overhead-line distribution due to their long service life, with SSEN operating over 1 million and repl...

The soft-fruit industry has changed almost beyond recognition over the past 20 years, with average yields of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries increasing 172%, 98% and 118% per ha respectively between 2000 and 2019, driven primarily by the switch to soil-less (substrate) protected cultivation. The sector is valued at £2.2bn annually with year-on-y...

The UK raspberry industry is seriously impacted by the cost of production. The price of raspberries over the last 20 years has grown by 232% (Defra Horticultural Statistics 2021). This increase in the price per kilo mainly reflects the changes in production systems (eg. programmed plant propagation, polytunnels, irrigation and fertigation, substrate use, ...

The problems around food nutrition and health are manifold. Climate change is increasingly impacting UK food production the food we import in terms of yield, quality, and nutritional content variability, all of which mean reduced food security and increased costs. Allied to this is a changing demographic with the estimate that by 2035 the majority of the ...

Food and drink packaging (\>$300Bn/year global market) relies on plastics and a variety of chemicals now considered hazardous to health and dangerous to the environment. These chemicals usually impart barrier properties, non-stick surfaces, flame retardancy and antimicrobial activities which are required for food/drink packaging. New regulations are being...

Potato farmers face many technical and commercial challenges, whilst operating within extremely tight financial margins. Pests and diseases can compromise the quality of whole crops - gradual phasing out of many chemical controls leaves few options for intervention. At the same time there is a shortage of skilled labour, progressive climate change is lead...

In this project we are building a novel pest/disease forecasting service that uses machine learning 'ensemble' techniques to imbue highly localised predictive power and wide pest-crop-geography application potential. This broad-spectrum approach to forecasting is highly innovative and has the potential to drive synergistic improvements in the usage of inp...

Due to emergent pandemic threats the global use of personal protection equipment (PPE) has hugely increased (in particular face masks). Most of this PPE is single use, contains plastics, is not easily recyclable and generally is disposed of via landfill or discarded into the environment. It is estimated that if each person in the UK uses a single disposab...

_Phytophthora infestans_ is the pathogen that caused the Great Irish Potato Famine and today over 170 described species of _Phytophthora_ cause crop disease on a global scale, costing commercial crop industries billions of dollars. The UK fruit industry and raspberry particularly has been decimated by _Phytophthora_ root rot (PRR) with an 80% reduction in...

Potato is the second most important crop in Kenya and is grown for food and as a source of income. The vast majority of growers in Kenya are smallholder farmers. Pests and diseases cause huge losses to crop production across the world, including Kenya. Potato production in Kenya is being seriously impacted by an emerging introduced pathogen, the Potato Cy...

Throughout their life cycle, plants are subjected to many adverse environmental conditions including low light levels and periods of drought or extreme temperatures which can dramatically affect plant survival and limit productivity. In order to cope with such stresses, plants adjust metabolically and physiologically. Unanticipated variation in crop devel...