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LEAF-related research

Aerial photograph of the Centre for Sustainable Cropping
An introduction to research at the LEAF Innovation Centre, including the Centre for Sustainable Cropping.

Research priorities

Scientific research at the Institute covers a wide range of scales and disciplines from landscape processes to gene functioning. As a LEAF Innovation Centre, our priorities are:

  • to understand how arable farming can provide multiple 'services' - a stable and resilient ecological infrastructure, supporting high yield and quality of products, within an attractive landscape that people feel a part of and are proud of,
  • to achieve this through improving and stabilising soil structure and function, the efficient use and conservation of nitrogen and phosphorus fertiliser, the beneficial cohabitation between crops and other arable vegetation, and regulating pests without reliance on chemical pesticides,
  • to demonstrate through on-farm trials and the Centre for Sustainable Cropping that the end is achievable and that we are getting there.

The results of the Institute's research on the priorities will be presented during 2011 as a series of free online articles available here.

Centre for Sustainable Cropping

The plans for a dedicated field research platform were realised in 2008 with the purchase of the farm at Balruddery. Six fields, amounting to more than 40 hectares of the farm, have been reserved for the Centre for Sustainable Cropping - a long term experiment to examine the biophysical and economic sustainability of arable farming.

While the farm as a whole will be managed as an integrative unit within the surrounding landscape, the six fields of the platform operate as a rotational, split field experiment that compares best conventional practice on one half and innovative (sustainable) practice on the other half. After two years of baseline measurements, the split field experiment began in autumn 2010 with the sowing of the first winter crops.

The Centre for Sustainable Cropping web pages have more information.

Contact for this page: Geoff Squire


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The James Hutton Research Institute is the result of the merger in April 2011 of MLURI and SCRI. This merger formed a new powerhouse for research into food, land use, and climate change.