Research

RHS Science Exchange

What cost the world in your garden?
How great is the threat to our native and garden flora from the
accelerating international plant trade?

Biographies of speakers

Professor David Ingram
Visiting Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Glasgow

Professor Ingram's interests span plant science, plant pathology, conservation, horticulture an education. He was Regius Keeper at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1990 to 1998. Professor Ingram is Honorary Professor and Advisor on the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Edinburgh; visiting Professor of Environmental Biology at Napier University, Edinburgh; visiting Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Glasgow and Chair of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Cambridge University. Currently he is Master of St Catherine's College, Cambridge. He has also been Chair of the Darwin Advisory Committee since 1999.

Professor Clive Brasier
Emeritus Mycologist at the Forest Research Agency, Farnham and Visiting Professor at Imperial College

Clive Brasier is Emeritus Mycologist with the Forest Research Agency, Farnham, UK and Visiting Professor in Mycology at Imperial College, London. Clive joined Pathology Branch of the UK Forest Research Agency in 1969 and soon became known for his work on the causes of the new Dutch elm disease epidemic. An ecological geneticist, he specialises in the pathology, population biology and potential for rapid evolution of invasive fungal pathogens, including Phytophthora and Dutch elm disease pathogens; in fungal speciation processes; and in the use of fungal viruses as biological control agents. Other interests include modernising international plant health protocols and pathogen response to climate change. He is currently working on assessing the risk posed by the two new invasive phytophthoras, P.ramorum and P. kernoviae spreading on beech, oak and other trees in south-west England; and on the acquisition of novel genes by the recently invasive Dutch elm disease pathogen via interspecies gene transfer.

Guy Barter
Head of Horticultural Advisory Services, RHS

Guy started his working life in the health service as a microbiologist, but retrained as a horticulturist, taking a BSc in horticulture at Bath University as a mature student. After working in the commercial vegetable and nursery industries, he became superintendent of the trials field at Wisley in 1990, growing the amazing range of plants assessed by the RHS Plant Committees for the Award of Garden Merit. After a spell as a gardening journalist, Guy returned to RHS Garden Wisley to run the member’s advisory service. The advisory team answer 65,000 enquiries every year by phone, fax, e-mail and in person at RHS shows on subjects ranging from where to buy equipment, materials and plants through to selecting the best plants to grow and solving plant problems and helping gardeners get the best from their gardens.

Guy writes regular columns for local papers in Surrey and Hampshire, contributes to Kitchen Garden magazine and with the rest of the Wisley scientists and advisors contributes to the RHS Help and Advice profiles in The Garden and the RHS website.

Panel members

Professor Jeff Waage
Director of the newly created Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College

Jeff Waage is Director of the newly created Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College. In 2000, Wye College merged with Imperial College, and after a year was turned into the Agricultural Science Department of that prestigious university. Jeff was Head of Agricultural Sciences from 2001, and following Faculty restructuring in 2004, also Head of the Department of Environmental Science and Technology until these two departments closed this year. He started his academic career at Imperial College in 1978, and left in 1986 to head the International Institute of Biological Control, part of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau. After 15 years in various positions in international agricultural development, he returned to Imperial and its new campus at Wye. Jeff is a pest management specialist by training, and has been involved in establishing a number of international initiatives to reduce pesticides, train farmers in sustainable agriculture and prevent the introduction of new alien pests. He helped to establish and subsequently chaired the Global Invasive Species Programme. Jeff is a member of the Defra Science Advisory Council and chair of its Epidemic Diseases subgroup, an advisor to the DTI Foresight project on the detection and identification of infectious diseases, and member of research council panels for BBSRC and ESRC RELU.

Martin Ward (Plant Health, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Martin Ward graduated in Agricultural Botany from the University of Reading in 1980, then worked in Swaziland for three years, following which he did a Masters in Plant Pathology at Imperial College. Joining the Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate (PHSI) of what was then MAFF, in 1985, Martin trained for two years at the Worcester office before being sent to cover PHSI work in Essex. In 1992, he moved to Plant Health HQ (then at Whitehall, now in York) to develop the plant passport regime for the EC Single Market. Since 1998 he has been UK representative on the EC Standing Committee on Plant Health, developing policy for quarantine pests and diseases. When not at work he battles with slugs on an allotment.