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Caley Winter Lecture – Dr Julie Graham
1st November, 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Soft Fruit Breeding and its impact for Scotland
The soft fruit industry is a substantial asset in Scotland, producing high quality berries. The industry however faces many challenges in competing with low-cost imports, in increasing productivity, and growing well under a low input, carbon neutral regime, and all in the light of the changing climate. The UK berry industry is worth £2.2bn, with scope for growth based on significant health benefits of fruit. However, berries are resource heavy crops reliant on energy, water, plastics and pesticide and fertiliser inputs. New varieties are needed that are more resource efficient and can grow with few actives and lower management regimes. These challenges along with a lack of suitable substrates, consumer pressure and labour issues are prompting a necessary transformation in crop production. Innovation in variety development, traditional growing practices and totally controlled growing is required. Research can address some of these major challenges.
Dr Julie Graham leads the Soft Fruit and Perennial Crops Group at the James Hutton Institute (JHI). Julie works closely with plant breeders to ensure advances in scientific research at JHI are used to benefit the development of new varieties. These include the translation of molecular genetic research into breeding solutions e.g. genetic markers for breeding root rot resistance to combat Phytophthora a serious soil disease in raspberry and other crops. Julie has led developments in high throughput field phenotyping in soft fruit crops to help understand the relationship between the environment and plant genetics. She sat on the AHDB/HDC soft fruit panel and still sits on the Scottish Society for Crop Research (SSCR) soft fruit committee, sits on the Horticulture and food loss network and is a past holder of the Jones Bateman Cup for Horticulture.
Our talks will be held in the Lecture Theatre at RBGE. We do still intend to put recordings of the talks on our website for members who cannot attend in person. All talks will begin at 7.30pm. Our talks are free and are open to non-members. All we ask is that you make a small donation at the door or perhaps buy a raffle ticket if you can.
