Professor Ian Crute CBE

Former Rothamsted Research Director features prominently in 2010 New Years' Honours list

31 December 2009 

Professor Ian Crute, the former director of Rothamsted Research said he was "Delighted to have had his contributions recognised in such a notable way" after news that he has been awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list today.

From 1999-2009, Professor Crute was the director of Rothamsted Research; the UK’s primary scientific establishment concerned with sustainable plant based agriculture and interactions with the environment. During his time as Director, Rothamsted received an unprecedented level of investment in its specialist laboratory facilities and is now unrivalled in the UK as an institution for crop research.

Professor Crute, who left Rothamsted Research in August 2009 to take up the post of Chief Scientist at The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), is among the leading scientific luminaries on the New Year Honours list and has been honoured by the Queen by virtue of his contribution to plant science.
Professor Crute’s scientific contributions are recorded in over 160 publications; he was awarded the Research Medal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1992 and the British Crop Production Council Medal in 2006. He is a past President of the British Society for Plant Pathology and held a Visiting Professorship in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford. His committee and board memberships include: Chairman of the Sainsbury Laboratory Council, member of the Lead Expert Group on the "Future of Food and Farming" Foresight project and Board member of HGCA’s Crop Evaluation Ltd. "After more than 20 years of inappropriately low political priority, agricultural science is now becoming well appreciated again for its fundamental importance to our future food security; there is much to be done if we are to achieve adequate supplies of sustainably produced food into the future," said Professor Crute. He added, "I have spent all my working life in agricultural science and have had the privilege of sharing this time with many talented people in several different institutions. However, the most recent 10 years spent as Director at Rothamsted, have been particularly rewarding. I very much appreciate this award but many others have contributed to what I have achieved during my time living and working in Hertfordshire."

Professor Crute is currently the Chief Scientist of The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). AHDB appointed Professor Crute with the brief to deliver collaboration and co-operation across its £15,000,000 annual investment of levy funds in research and knowledge transfer programmes. He took up the post in early September 2009 and is part of the Senior Executive Team. Ian has a First Class Honours degree in botany and a PhD in plant pathology from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. From 1973 to 1986 he was a research group leader in plant pathology at what is now Warwick-HRI (formerly Horticulture Research International - Wellesbourne). In 1986 he obtained a Fulbright Fellowship and went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA to work on the genetics of resistance to fungal pathogens. On returning to England in 1987 he moved to HRI East Malling (now East Malling Research) as Head of the Crop and Environment Protection Department. He moved back to HRI at Warwick in 1993 and after two years as Head of Plant Pathology he became Director at Wellesbourne with overall responsibility for the research direction at the site until his move to Rothamsted.

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Rothamsted Research is an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council