Regenerative farming systems for potato production

Dr Paula Misiewicz (HAU), Prof Jim Monaghan (HAU), Dr Edward Dickin (HAU), Dr Shaunagh Slack (PepsiCo), Dr S McWilliam (PepsiCo)

BACKGROUND

Our soils will have to play an important role in avoiding catastrophic climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and they must also mitigate the effects of climate change that is already determined by historic emissions. To do this they must be managed to be more resilient in the face of extreme rainfall events and drought.

Farmers are increasingly interested in soil health, biological methods of improving soil fertility and reducing the need for synthetic inputs; an approach often referred to as regenerative agriculture. A key principle of regenerative agriculture is minimising soil disturbance. Intensive soil disturbance is caused during conventional potato growing – tillage, bed-forming, destoning, planting and harvesting, accompanied by soil compaction by heavy machinery.

Creating deep, destoned seedbeds on soils with stones/clods is currently deemed necessary within the potato and root crop industries to reduce tuber/root damage and misshapen produce, and to improve harvesting speed but the process involves intensively sieving large soil volumes (>3k m3/ha). The intensity and frequency of potato cultivation operations are generally deemed to be unfavourable to soil health and do not fit in with the current drive towards regenerative agriculture and net zero. Rapid innovation is necessary to preserve and enhance UK potato/root crop production and maintain UK food security/supply-chain stability.

OBJECTIVES AND APPROACHES

The aim of this PhD is to conduct a detailed study on the effect of novel sustainable soil management practices versus the conventional approaches in potato production on conventional and regenerative farming systems. This project will utilise an Innovate UK co-funded ‘Potato-LITE – Low Intensity Tillage Enhancements for Sustaining Potato Production in Future Regenerative Agricultural Systems’ Project (https://potato-lite.farm/) in which both Harper Adams University (https://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/) and PepsiCo https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z/agriculture) are partners together with McCain Foods, GRIMME UK, forward thinking potato farmers, Cranfield University and Crop Health and Protection with input from private-sector expert consultants. The consortium will provide experimental plots, to allow the effects of sustainable cultivations (i.e. reduced depth and intensity of tillage with and without destoning) versus the conventional approaches (i.e. deep primary tillage, bedforming, bedtilling and destoning) to be evaluated.

There are two hypotheses underpinning this PhD studentship:

Reduced soil cultivations for potato production have the potential to improve soil health whilst maintaining good crop yield and quality.
Managing soils using regenerative practices (no-till/reduced tillage/diverse rotation) improves their resilience and ability to recover more rapidly after a potato crop.

The objectives of this work are to:

Conduct detailed assessment of the impact of cultivation systems on soil health, resilience and ecosystem functions.
Conduct detailed GHG emission measurements from potato production under different cultivation systems.
Monitor the effect of different cultivation systems on soil health, recovery and consecutive crop growth at both conventional and regenerative field sites.
Recommend improved soil cultivation practices for both potato and arable production to maintain crop yields and quality, and improve soil health, resilience and ecosystem functions.

The PhD student will study the effect of individual soil cultivation processes across two commercial farms (conventional and regenerative) over 2-years using replicated (6 replicates) experiments. The effect of these will be monitored for 24 months following the potato crop to assess soil resilience and recovery after potato production.

PRIMARY LOCATION OF THIS PHD

This PhD will be based and registered with Harper Adams University.

TRAINING

Students will have access to training opportunities through their University to complement their scientific development. This will be augmented by training in key bioscience areas such as statistics through the CTP-SAI.

This project will give the student experience in plant physiology, soil and crop science, GHG flux measurements, commercial field experiments, collaborating with a commercial sponsor and with a large national research programme. The placement within PepsiCo’s R&D Ag Science team will give the student the opportunity to engage with a large-scale commercial enterprise and understand the application of R&D within an industry setting.

There will be additional skills training to enhance employability and research capability. All CTP-SAI students will receive Graduate Training in Leadership and Management from MDS (www.mds-ltd.co.uk). Additionally, students will create their Personal Development Plan (PDP) to identify their development needs and areas of strength. Each student will receive individual coaching and mentoring pertinent to their career plans and skills development in addition to the scientific project supervision.

INDUSTRIAL PLACEMENT

Placements are a key feature of CTP and UKRI-BBSRC expects all doctoral candidates on a CTP programme to undertake a placement. Placements can be in the form of research placements (3-18 months duration) or used more flexibly for experiential learning of professional skills for business and/or entrepreneurship. All placements are developed in collaboration between the partners with input from the doctoral candidate.

APPLICATION AND ELIGIBILITY

Contact Dr Paula Misiewicz (pmisiewicz@harper-adams.ac.uk) for an informal discussion on the research content of this PhD. Paula’s profile page is

https://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/general/staff/profile/201022/Paula-Misiewicz/.

This studentship will begin in October 2024. The successful candidate should have (or expect to have) an Honours Degree (or equivalent) with a minimum of 2.1 in Plant Science, Applied Statistics, or other related science subjects. Students with an appropriate Masters degree are particularly encouraged to apply.

This studentship is for four years and is fully funded in line with UKRI-BBSRC standard rates. These will be for 2024/2025, an annual maintenance stipend of £19,237, fee support of £4,786, a research training support grant of £5,000 and conference and UK fieldwork expenses of £300.

Due to funder-mandated caps for the CTP as a whole, this project is only available to ‘Home’ applicants

To be classed as a home student, candidates must meet the following criteria:

Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or
Have settled status, or
Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
Have indefinite leave to remain or enter

If a candidate does not meet the criteria above, they would be classed as an international student would not be eligible for this round of recruitment.

Anyone interested should complete the online application form before the deadline of 14th April 2024. Interviews will be held during April 2024.

Please contact recruitment-ctp-sai@niab.com for further application details.

APPLY

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