Enhancing efficiency in vertical farming: a focus on crop improvement

Fluctuating environmental conditions severely impact Scottish crop production affecting crop yields, nutritional quality and food security. Growth in indoor environments such as vertical farms (VF) offers opportunities to extend food security by providing year-round production in precise, pest-free, optimised environments for year-round production of high-quality crops irrespective of external conditions.

Dr Kyriakos (Akis) Varypatakis

Akis is an experienced plant scientist with expertise in genomics, plant nematology and the application of next-generation sequencing techniques and analyses.

In his current role as Research Scientist within the Molecular Physiology & Genetics group at The James Hutton Institute, he works towards understanding the interactions between plants and abiotic or biotic factors using molecular biology tools and genomic approaches.

 

Area of Strategic Research Programme

Kyriakos (Akis) Varypatakis

The James Hutton Institute

Invergowrie

Dundee DD2 5DA

Scotland, UK

Simon Pont

Simon in a senior Research Technician for the Plant Biochemistry & Food Quality sub-group (within EBS department and Advanced Plant Growth Centre).

His current role is wide ranging from experimental set up all the way through to sample analysis using high-throughput methods, including HPLC, LC-MS and GC-MS.

 

Area of Strategic Research Programme

Theme B: Sustainable food system and supply; Project B1-5: Crop improvement for sustainable production in a changing environment

Simon Pont

The James Hutton Institute

Invergowrie

Dundee DD2 5DA

Scotland, UK

Dr Raul Huertas

Raul is a senior crop molecular physiologist at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, working within the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC). His discovery-led research explores how plants respond at the physiological and molecular levels to environmental stress, as well as their adaptive strategies and limitations.

Raul Huertas

The James Hutton Institute

Invergowrie

Dundee DD2 5DA

United Kingdom

Vegetation structure affects the territory size of meadow pipits

Our ongoing project at Glen Finglas has shown how sensitive biodiversity is to changing upland management. To maintain consistency, we have used the same monitoring methods since the beginning of the project. However, one of the benefits of long-term projects is that new technology emerges and can be incorporated to allow more detailed understanding to be developed.