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.

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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.

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.

James is the Managing Director of East Suffolk Produce, a Potato Grower Group working with farmers in Suffolk and Essex. He grew up on the family farm and went on to study Agriculture at Wye College. Graduating in 2000 he enjoyed experience working for G’s at Barway, as a Technical Fieldsman for MBM and as an Agronomist for GVAP based in Suffolk. From there he joined East Suffolk Produce in 2013 as Agronomist and Managing Director. He is also still involved in the family farming business which grows 50-60 Ha’s of Potatoes/annum as well as cereals and Sugar beet.

James is passionate about seeing potato growers thrive and enjoys looking for opportunities that will see farmers remain profitable whilst providing customers with the quality of produce that they need to supply to consumers. To this end, he is involved with CUPGRA and sits on the steering group of The Potato Partnership (TPP) which is a grower and industry initiative to continue the principle of SPOT Farm started by the AHDB.

Mac McWilliam is an R&D Director at PepsiCo.  Mac has a PhD in crop physiology and over 20 years experience in managing research programs focused on optimizing crop performance. Mac joined PepsiCo in 2012 and leads a global team who identify and develop technologies and agronomic practices which can improve sustainable production in the key crops that PepsiCo uses across its billion $ brands, including potato production for Walkers.  He is also chair of Potato-LITE, a cross-industry Innovate UK co-funded project which aims to develop novel machinery and cultivation practices for UK-based potato farms to optimise tillage intensity, improve soil health and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Bill Watts – Trials Manager (Greenvale – Produce Solutions)  

Bill was brought up on a small beef and sheep farm in South Shropshire. He read and researched in crop sciences at Harper Adams University for 10 years. He is known for his PhD research on factors affecting biofumigation success against PCN, and more recently for his role in refining PCN trap crop agronomy. Bill worked at AHDB Potatoes for two years as Knowledge Exchange Manager for the West and Wales and has now been Trials Manager at Produce Solutions for nearly five years. He primarily focusses on development of new varieties, crop protection products and cropping techniques for the potatoes sector. He is a member of CUPGRA’s Research and Development Committee.

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.

Having graduated from Newcastle University in 2010 after studying Agriculture with agronomy I joined The Co-operative Farms as a graduate trainee. I then climbed the farm management ladder on cereal and root crop farms around the country before becoming Farms Director at AG Wright & Son (Farms) Ltd in 2019.  In my current role I manage all aspects of the 1870ha cereal and potato business growing produce for a variety of markets across a range of soil types in East Cambridgeshire. We are constantly looking to learn and evolve as a business to provide our customers with the product they need, to minimise our impact on the environment we grow in and to optimise our long term financial margins.