David Johnson, head of post-harvest research at East Malling Research (EMR), was awarded the Marsh Horticultural Research Award by the president of the Royal Horticultural Society, Peter Buckley, last week.
Johnson, who has worked at EMR since 1972, was honoured in recognition of his long-term research on the pre- and post-harvest factors affecting the storage of fruit.
He and his group at EMR have developed industry-standard storage conditions for a wide range of tree fruit and formulated storage recommendations for all apple and pear varieties grown in the UK.
His research involves predicting the influences of orchard management treatments on storage quality and developing treatments to improve storage potential as well as finding methods to measure quality in horticultural crops both destructively and non-destructively.
His greatest challenge has been to discover the cause behind Diffuse Browning Disorder in controlled atmosphere (CA)-stored Cox apples.
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