The James Hutton Institute is based in Scotland and combines strengths in crops, soils and land use and environmental research, making a major contribution to the understanding of key global issues, such as food, energy and environmental security, and developing and promoting effective technological and management solutions. The Institute is an internationally networked organisation that employs almost 500 scientists and support staff, making it one of the largest research centres in the UK.

Role in the project:
Hutton’s strength in the IPMorama project relates to our international expertise in potato late blight research and potato resistance characterisation. We will play a key role in WP1 in the search for and exploitation of resistance genes via genomic enrichment sequencing of breeding material in support of variety-centric IPM. In WP2 on the use of crop variety resistance at a landscape level, we lead a task to probe the pathogen genome to develop new molecular markers for more rapid DNA-based characterisation of isolates of Phytophthora infestans. We will also contribute knowledge of population change on a European scale garnered through our central role in the EuroBlight network. In WP3 we will build on our prior experience of IPM development and deployment in the field to run 3 years of variety centric IPM validation trials on our research farm. We will also contribute to the overall communication of the outputs of IPMorama via our excellent contacts within the potato industry in the UK and beyond.