Green finance and how it can drive environmental progress alongside economic interests is under the spotlight at The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen thanks to a newly created role.

The Green Finance Fellowship, awarded to new Hutton staff member Dr Umar Farooq and funded by The Macaulay Development Trust, will see research carried out into how finance can accelerate environmental and social sustainability.

Independent research organisation The James Hutton Institute has strengthened its board with five new members, including its first early career non-executive directors.

The new board members, who come from around the UK, bring both a wealth of experience and fresh perspectives to the institute’s board, across science, strategy, innovation and engagement.

Research on proteins that could help scientists improve and develop new crops could get a significant boost thanks to a newly funded project aimed at unlocking the “dark matter” that regular research methods can’t see.

The James Hutton Institute, University of Dundee and collaborators have been awarded £1.165M from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to study a feature of cereal plants that can help improve crops.

Alongside Dr Chiara Campoli and Dr Runxuan Zhang from the James Hutton Institute, the partners on the project include Professor Tracy Lawson from the University of Essex and Dr James Cockram from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. The project will run for three years.

First published in The Press and Journal on 25 October 2023

By Professor Marc Stutter

Major flood events, like Storm Babet that many are still reeling from, cause significant and long-lasting disruption to lives.

The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen is supporting research that suggests 12 years of warfare in Northwest Syria is contaminating soils, posing risks to agriculture and food security in a region already under critical stress.

The research by a team of Syrian researchers, funded by the charity Cara (the Council for At-Risk Academics), is the first to measure soil contamination in Northwest Syria since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. 

The James Hutton Institute is inviting expressions of interest for a partner to lead its pioneering HydroGlen project in northeast Scotland.

HydroGlen is a demonstration project, setting out the potential for farming communities to use hydrogen in a scalable and replicable way so that they could become self-reliant, low-carbon energy producers and exporters.

Internationally recognised expert on global sustainability issues Professor Johan Rockström shared groundbreaking insights at the 44^th annual TB Macaulay lecture held in Edinburgh on Wednesday night (18^th October 2023).

Each year the Macaulay Development Trust, in partnership with The James Hutton Institute, hosts a world-renowned guest speaker for its annual TB Macaulay Lecture.

The lecture was held on Thursday evening (18th October 2023) in Edinburgh, where we were honoured to host Johan Rockström, who is internationally recognised for his work on global sustainability issues. We were delighted to welcome an audience of over 500 attendees to the event.

A rare and very elusive ant has been discovered to be thriving in Deeside for the first time in more than 70 years.

The shining guest ant, known for being a “cuckoo” of the ant world, because it only lives in the nests of other ants, was last seen in Deeside 1952.

The rediscovery of the ant was made by wildlife tour operators Dan and Rachael Brown of Wild Discovery, at Crathie, near Balmoral Castle.