- Integrated Pest Management

- Crop Protection

- Applied Plant Pathology

- Sustainable Crop Production

- Agroecology

- Farmer behaviour

After completing his PhD in plant ecology and pathology at the John Innes Centre, UK, Henry worked as a Researcher for the Organic Research Centre, UK, where he was involved in large European projects on agricultural systems including projects on conservation agriculture (OSCAR) and plant breeding (COBRA). He then moved to Teagasc, Ireland where he worked to improve IPM approaches to arable farming and increase adoption of best practice at farm level. In his current role at SRUC he is a work package leader in Scottish government funded work on IPM where he’s building on strong links he has with various research institutes in the UK and Europe. He also has experience of conducting cropping systems research in West Africa (Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau). In addition to his research commitments he regularly contributes to meetings of growers, agronomists and the agrochemical industry (e.g. SRUC open days and workshops; Farm Advisory Service, Arable Scotland).

IPM practices are numerous and varied, which makes them difficult to quantify. In search of a universal metric to gauge adoption levels of IPM Henry recently led a team of researchers in developing a survey and metric to measure IPM practices on temperate arable farms (Creissen et al. 2019). He is currently working with The Voluntary Initiative to improve their IPM plans based on this research. IPM plans are an annual requirement of farmers operating under quality assurance schemes such as Red Tractor and Scottish Quality Crops. This provides an opportunity to establish baselines for adoption levels of IPM whilst also allowing us to monitor changes in IPM practice from year to year, thus providing an indication of the effectiveness of R&D and Knowledge Exchange activities related to IPM.

Henry is module coordinator for ‘New Perspectives in Plant Protection’ in the BSc Horticulture and BSc Agriculture degree programmes and ‘Plant Protection: Integrated Approaches’ in the HND Horticulture and HND Agriculture programmes. He also delivers teaching content for the following SRUC modules: Agronomy, Advanced Agronomy, Plant Protection, Plant Biotic Interactions, Organic Production Systems. He delivers teaching on the University of Edinburgh’s BSc Plant Science programme and SRUC/University of Edinburgh’s joint venture, the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security BSc and MSc programmes. Henry also contributes to the teaching on a course leading to professional BASIS Crop Protection Certificate.

PhD project (2020-2026) 'Enhancing Integrated Pest Management in UK Forestry'. Joint with Forestry Research and University of Edinburgh.

MSc project in Organic Farming (2020-2021) 'Significant factors in effective weed control strategies for UK organic arable crops'. 

MSc project in Sustainable Plant Health (2019-2020) Investigate the role of various mixtures on disease resistance and yield of winter barley.

MSc project in Agricultural Science (2016-2018) Identifying how to improve Knowledge Transfer relating to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) on Irish tillage farms. Joint with Teagasc and University College Dublin.

2021: 'Mapping information networks that influence farmer behaviours related to IPM adoption'. Plant Health Centre Scotland funded project.

2021:  'Exploring the Twitterverse: Developing novel approaches to scaling the dissemination of expert knowledge on social media platforms in Scotland'. SEFARI gateway funded project.

2020-2021:  'IPM Test &Trial - Environmental Land Management - Integrated Pest Management'. Collaboration with ADAS. DEFRA funded project. 

2019-2020:  'Review of evidence on Integrated Pest Management'. Collaboration with ADAS. DEFRA funded project. 

2018-2019:  'Network analysis – where do people in Scotland get their plant health information?' Plant Health Centre Scotland funded project.

2019-2023: 'The combined effects of tillage regime and crop variety on fungicide requirement of winter barley crops'. Mains of Loirston trust funded project.

2018-2022:  'Integrated Pest Management techniques with agronomy inputs to produce a profitable winter barley crop in a sustainable fashion' Mains of Loirston trust funded project.

2017-2021:  'Integrated Pest Management approaches to achieve a high feed value crop of winter barley through use of varietal mixtures'. Mains of Loirston trust funded project.

2017-2021: RESAS Strategic Research Programme- WP2.1 Crop and grassland production and disease control. WP2.1.6. ‘Integrated Pest Management’. Scottish Government funded project.

2017-2021: RESAS Strategic Research Programme- WP2.3 Productive and sustainable land management. WP2.3.9 ‘Integrated Farming Systems’ and WP2.3.12. ‘Uptake of best practice’. Scottish Government funded project.

2015-2017:  'Establishing a Platform for Integrated Pest Management in Irish Crops’. Department of Agriculture Fisheries and the Marine Research Stimulus funded project.

2013-2016:  'Coordinating Organic plant BReeding Activities for diversity. CORE organic II funded project.

2012-2016:  'Optimising Subsidiary Crop Applications in Rotations' European Commision Seventh Framework (FP7) funded project.

2009-2013:  'The role of genotypic diversity in stabilizing plant productivity in variable environments’ BBSRC funded project.