Project Progress Update from Dion Garrett: Where am I?

Written by CTP Student, Dion Garrett Where am I? It’s that time of year again where many are recovering from over indulgent festivities and making new year’s resolutions; to run 10km, eat healthie…

Enhancing Nature with a Little Nurture: A History of Avocado Breeding

Written by CTP Student Jessica Fostvedt An ancient civilisation located in the south of what is now Mexico, the early Mesoamericans cultivated one of the most nutritious foods found on Earth.  The su…

Waitrose CTP Welcome Event Coverage

Lancaster University covered an article of the Waitrose CTP induction event collaboration with CGE. Click here for the link to the article

CTP Second Cohort Welcome Event

Written by Roz Wareing Waitrose CTP welcomed its second cohort of students last month. The students travelled from their home institutes to Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University for the…

The Great British Weather Off

Written by Nick Kuht (CTP Student) The weather seems to have been the main topic of conversation over recent weeks. For most of us, our biggest concerns have revolved around avoiding getting sunburnt …

Integrated control of Sclerotinia disease in celery and lettuce

By Tracey Moreton (Waitrose CTP PhD student) My Journey Starts in the beautiful region of Murcia, Spain. Here I visited celery and lettuce farms in Los Alcazares and Aguilas where I set off to collect…

Digging up dirt on cover crops

By Mandy Stoker (CTP Student) I was recently asked to visit a land owner who had a rather difficult and sensitive problem to deal with.  The gentleman had been working in partnership with a business …

Soils and the 25 Environment Plan

By Edward Baker (Waitrose CTP Student)   With increasing public and political significance, modern environmentalism has begun to distance itself from a Laissez-faire attitude around natural ecosy…

Agroecological Crop Protection- yet another acronym?

By Hannah McGrath (Waitrose CTP Student)   In early February, I left Luton airport on a dreary Saturday morning for the sunshine in Volterra, Tuscany. I was off to attend a course on Agroecologi…

Waitrose CTP Annual Conference

By Roz Wareing Waitrose CTP students, supervisors and board members attended the 2018 Waitrose Science Day, held at Scarman House. University of Warwick. The students battled snow and wind to attend …

Climate change risk for half of plant and animal species in biodiversity hot-spots

Up to half of plant and animal species in the world’s most naturally rich areas, such as the Amazon and the Galapagos, could face local extinction by the turn of the century due to climate change if…

Payments to protect carbon stored in forests must increase

Efforts to protect tropical forests in Southeast Asia for the carbon they store may fail because protection payments are too low – according to University of East Anglia research. A study publis…

A sunscreen for biopesticides

Scientists have taken a step forward in their efforts to tackle serious crop pests by reducing the sensitivity of biopesticides to sunlight Insect pests consume around a third of all the crops we grow…

The Battle of Resistance

By Dion Garrett (Waitrose CTP Student) A consent battle for dominance is being fought between grower and agricultural pest every growing season. This fight has been waged ever since civilisations requ…

NIAB EMR-China research unlocks strawberry disease resistance

NIAB EMR, in a joint UK–China research programme, has discovered several strains of the strawberry disease Verticillium wilt (Verticillium dahliae), belonging to two different groups, that act in ve…

Say it with British flowers

A passion for sustainable supply chains and the desire to do something useful, brought Becky Swinn to Lancaster University. Now her research project comparing the carbon footprint of British, Dutch an…