Hattie Roberts

Stakeholder-orientated crops scientist with experience bridging crop and plant science and commercial business. Proven record of managing industrial partnerships, conducting and presenting field and glasshouse trials, and translating data into insights for commercial growers and breeders.

Experience in navigating fast-paced stakeholder landscapes, building relationships, and driving commercial success.

Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate in Crop Production at Harper Adams University (2025-03 – Present)

My current role involves managing industry-facing collaborations with G’s Fresh, Enza Zaden, BASF Nunhems, and Tozer Seeds, and presenting evidence to optimise celery and lettuce propagation at a commercial scale. Key responsibilities include:

• Conducting leafy vegetable variety trials: Designing, co-ordinating and delivering lettuce and celery variety trials from germination under glass, through to transplant production, field establishment, and harvest. Liaising with commercial growers to plan seasonal trial programmes and collecting, analysing, and interpreting phenotypic, yield, and post-harvest data.
• Pre-breeding/ germplasm evaluation: Collaborating with leafy vegetable breeders to evaluate germplasm and identify genetic material that supports future breeding strategies for improved transplant traits.
• Project leadership: Leading the delivery of concurrent research work packages, aligning objectives and outputs with priorities of four vegetable breeding companies and a commercial grower.
• Stakeholder management: Working directly with growers and breeders to identify challenges, define variety trial objectives, coordinate implementation, and present evidence-based recommendations that inform commercial production decisions.
• Scientific communication: Translating complex biological and statistical data into clear, commercially relevant recommendations that support product development, breeding decisions and grower adoption.

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Plant Physiology and Anatomy at Lancaster Environment Centre (2023-04 – 2025-02)

In this role, I generated evidence to advance high-yielding crop traits, focusing on yield and resilience. Key responsibilities included:

• Experimental design: Designing and managing controlled environment experiments investigating crop performance under environmental stress.
• Data analysis: Managing and visualising large biological datasets and QA.
• Interpreting phenotypic responses to support understanding of crop performance.
• Communicating findings: through technical reports, presentations, and scientific publications to academic and industry audiences.

Doctoral Researcher – Crop and Atmospheric Science at Lancaster Environment Centre and UKCEH (2018 – 2023)

Here, I Independently led a multi-site applied agricultural research project addressing knowledge gaps in crop stress responses, yield, and quality. Responsibilities included:

• Conducting scientific studies: Designing and delivering multi-location crop experiments.
• Remote travel: Co-ordinating field logistics, environmental monitoring and data collection.
• Data analysis: Performing statistical analysis and data visualisation in R Studio and MS Office.
• Scientific communication: Publishing peer-reviewed, high-impact papers, and presenting findings to international scientific and stakeholder audiences.

PhD in Atmospheric Science and Crop Science – Lancaster Environment Centre and UKCEH (2018 – 2023)

Master of Research in Biosciences – Aberystwyth University (2017 – 2018)

BSc (Hons) in Plant Biology – Aberystwyth University (2014 – 2017)