Sarah Calcutt, business development manager at top-fruit marketer Norman Collett, informed delegates and students at the National Fruit Show about her experiences as a Nuffield scholar.
Under the scheme, 50 students a year get a bursary from Nuffield and the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers to study across the fields of agronomy, agricultural journalism, dairy and arable farming, as well as a number of other agricultural practices.
Calcutt told the audience that the knowledge she gained from travelling the world - from Australia and New Zealand to the US - had helped develop skills in research and communication and given her insight with commercial case studies.
She said: “There were a number of really valuable things that I learnt and thought about such as - are we using what’s in front of us effectively? The UK only produces 36 per cent of the top fruit sold in the UK and we need to understand both the customer and the grower.
“We need an over-arching plan for the UK to look at new varieties. Are we informative enough to the consumer, or are we too much?”
Calcutt also said she had learnt some lessons that could be vital to the UK: “A Horticulture New Zealand audit of all horticultural production showed how the industry and government have a plan to turn their business into a £20 billion industry by 2020.
“Here we need good science to help things and we need DEFRA to have a different attitude to ‘that’s commercial, so we won’t fund it’."
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