SCRI, Scotland’s leading centre for research on plants, has announced three, new members of its governing body. All three are outstanding specialists in their areas of interest.

Allan Stevenson

Allan Stevenson is an arable farmer from East Lothian specialising in growing potatoes, principally for all year round supply to Tesco, using principles of integrated farming. He is also a business graduate and Chartered Accountant, with international experience in growing companies and consultancies in several sectors, most recently Group Finance Director of EC Harris Group.
Current roles include:

• Non-Executive Director of DEGW Plc
• Cobra Group and RSABI (charity)
• Chairman of a Pension Scheme
• consulting and advisory work for other international businesses and committee roles with SAC and NFU.

Allan joined on January 1st this year.

Peter Berry CMG

Peter is President of the Crown Agents Foundation, established in 1997 to succeed government as the owner of the Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administrations which helps governments of developing and transition states throughout the world make best use of the human and material resources. He was CEO and subsequently Chairman of Crown Agents from 1988 to 2007, having from 1982 been Director for Asia, Pacific and Middle East. Peter’s early career was in South East Asia with a large trading and plantation group and from 1973 to 1982 he was CEO of a UK plc with plantation and agricultural engineering interests in South and South East Asia, East Africa and Europe.

He is Chairman of one quoted investment trust, director of another and senior independent director of the construction company Kier Group plc. He is a retained advisor to the City of London Corporation on international affairs, having similarly advised the UK DTI for many years. He is deputy Chairman of the Charities Aid Foundation, a Director and Trustee of Charity Bank and UK President of the global coalition against corruption, Transparency International. Peter has a home in Fife and a smallholding in Italy. He will join the Governing Board on April 1st.

Professor Wilson Sibbett CBE, FRS, FRSE

Professor Wilson Sibbett is a University of St Andrews physicist who has made groundbreaking developments in the world of laser technology. He was the first person to chair the Scottish Science Advisory Committee which was established under the auspices of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to provide independent advice to Scottish Executive Ministers on strategic scientific issues, including science strategy, science policy and science priorities. He is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast gaining his Ph.D degree from Imperial College in 1973. He conducted research and taught as a staff member of the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College and transferred to St Andrews to take up the post of Professor of Natural Philosophy. At present he is the Director of Research in the School of Physics and Astronomy. He is the co-author of more than 200 papers. He is a winner of the Rumford medal, awarded biennially in recognition of an outstandingly important recent discovery in science made by a scientist working in Europe. Professor Sibbett will join the Governors on April 1st.

SCRI is Scotland’s leading centre for research on plants and the way they interact with managed and natural environments. Teams of scientists based at Invergowrie, just outside Dundee, are working on plant diseases, genetics, climate change and the environment and quality, healthy food.