International news, comment and conference reports from a European perspective   

Most of the content in Crop Protection Monthly is original  material written by the experienced editorial team and other correspondents. Nearly all of them have worked in the crop protection and allied industries and many run their own businesses, mostly in the area of consultancy. Other contributors to Crop Protection Monthly have worked for trade associations and as researchers in the public and private sectors. All of CPM's contributors bring an insider's perspective and authority to what they write. 

Crop Protection Monthly Editorial Team:

Martin Redbond - Editor

Bruce Knight - New Technologies Correspondent

Alan Baylis - UK Correspondent

Brian Hopper - Insect Control Correspondent

Alan Knowles - New Product Development & Manufacturing Correspondent

Krishnamurthy Ganesan - Indian Correspondent  

José María Lopez - Spanish Correspondent

Fred Raveney - Regulatory & Environmental Affairs Correspondent 

Trevor Rees - Australasian Correspondent 

Elaine Warrell - Special Correspondent & Proof Reader

Martin is a graduate in agricultural science from Leeds University. He has spent thirty years working in the crop protection industry for multinational and privately-owned agrochemical producers marketing pesticides, adjuvants, micronutrients and plant biostimulants.

During twenty years working for Sandoz, Martin held various sales, marketing, technical and regulatory management positions and developed and marketed products based on cyproconazole, dicamba and other active ingredients.  He has considerable experience of setting up new distribution channels and facilitated the change that Sandoz made in the UK from using  national distributors to direct marketing through a network of regional distributors.

Most recently, Martin has been working within the contract research industry, creating pan-European project development plans for multinational clients. He has visited and worked with manufacturers in Japan, South Korea and India as well as throughout the European Union. Martin is the author of The Complete Guide to the Marketing of Agrochemicals in the EU and The Future of Crop Protection in the European Union both published by PJB Publications Ltd, Richmond, Surrey    

Back to top

Bruce has had a long and distinguished career in industrial marketing in the crop protection and farm equipment industries, both in Europe and North America. He has a successful record of managing change and introducing new technologies which impact on food, agriculture and horticulture.

A chemistry graduate of Southampton University, Bruce gained post-graduate qualifications from Wye College, University of London, and Bangor University. He is a past chairman of the Food, Drink and Agriculture Group at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has Chartered Marketer status. Bruce is also senior partner of a family-owned arable farm enterprise in Hampshire. In 1992 Bruce established Innovation Management, a specialist business consultancy that advises both private and public sector organisations.

He is a leading expert on the development of industrial renewables and energy derived from crops as well as in the commercialisation of transgenic crops. He has been active in helping organise the Precision Farming Alliance and is a director of Sky-farm Limited, a UK company developing  remote sensed imagery as an agronomy management aid.  

 Back to top

Alan  is a business development consultant specialising in innovation.  With a background in international crop science R&D, Alan established Nuvistix Innovation in 2004 to provide support for innovation and new ventures.  The Nuvistix portfolio covers the whole innovation process from technology/market foresight and accessing funding, through creativity and knowledge management, to technical marketing.  Formerly, Alan worked for Syngenta (previously Zeneca and ICI) as a global R&D project manager at Jealott’s Hill International Research Centre.  His areas of technical expertise include herbicides, adjuvants, plant growth regulators, and crop physiology and agronomy.  Besides working generally in aspects of innovation, Alan also works in biosciences.  Recent developments in non-food crops, natural products and biofuels are a particular interest.  Alan has a PhD in crop physiology from the University of Leeds and an MBA from Henley Management College. 

   Back to top

Brian graduated in ecology and behaviour from London University and is a Chartered Biologist and Member of the Institute of Biology. He worked for 18 years as an R&D scientist for Shell Research Ltd on various aspects of crop protection. Brian was closely involved with the field and commercial development of the pyrethroid insecticides in a large number of countries.  During that period, he also monitored a wide range of international field trials to study the environmental impact of crop protection chemicals. Brian later joined Shell International Chemical Company for marketing and business development of its range of crop protection products world-wide. This included a period as country manager in China.

Since leaving Shell, Brian has worked as an independent marketing and technical consultant for a range of clients in both the agricultural and chemical sectors. He is also a beekeeper and produces honey under his own label. He is a member of the Sussex Beekeepers Association.          

Back to top

Alan was a senior formulation chemist for a leading multinational agrochemical company for 20 years before setting up his own consultancy, FORM-AK Formulation Consultancy Services, Tonbridge, Kent (www.form-ak.com) in 1992. 

Since that time he has been advising a number of well-known agrochemical companies and additive suppliers on new types of agrochemical and biopesticide formulations, equipment and processes. He is also a recognised agrochemical consultant to the United Nations and has experience in China, South Korea, India and Ethiopia.

Alan is a graduate in chemistry from the University of Sheffield, a Chartered Chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has written many papers and articles on agrochemical formulations and adjuvants. Alan is the editor of Chemistry and Technology of Agrochemical Formulations, a book published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998, and the author of Trends in Pesticide Formulations, published by PJB Publications in 2001.   

Back to top

Krishnamurthy has an MSc in chemistry from Madras University, India, and has more than two decades of experience in the pesticide industry.  He was chief chemist at Coromandel Indag Products, where he worked on the development of isoproturon and deltamethrin formulations from 1981 onwards. Krishnamurthy worked for Montari Industries Ltd, New Delhi, a company supported by the Indian pharmaceutical giant, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, from 1984 until 1999. He held various senior management positions in quality control, product development, global registration and international sales.

In 2000, Krish started his own marketing, consulting and publishing company, Mahamaya Life Sciences, which publishes the international magazine Agrolook. Mahamaya is the sole sales agent for BCPC publications in India.

 Back to top

José María  is a graduate in agricultural science from Seville University. He started his career in crop protection at the Andalusian research centre, Rancho de la Merced. Here he had responsibility for a large collection of vines cultivars and conducted crop protection research on a wide range of vine pests. José María  has also worked as  a Field Biologist for DuPont de Nemours during which time he was responsible for setting up field testing facilities in the southern part of Spain for the evaluation of new fungicides and insecticides. In recent years he has worked with a large contract research organisation as a Senior Trials Co-ordinator with additional responsibility for sales and marketing throughout Spain. 

Back to top

Fred is a chemistry graduate from the University of London, a Chartered Chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has worked in international registration and regulatory affairs in the agrochemical industry and as a consultant specialising in this area for 34 years. He provides a wide range of international regulatory services for numerous multinational companies.

Fred worked for four years for UK's Medical Research Council (MRC) before specialising in regulatory and registration issues. He subsequently worked  in this specialist area for the Wellcome Foundation, Fisons Ltd, Mitchell Cotts Chemicals, Union Carbide and RCC. He founded a consultancy business Agrilex in Switzerland in 1987, which relocated to the UK in 1997. 

 Back to top

Trevor Rees is based in Victoria, Australia, and has been a freelance journalist for over 25 years. He contributes to a number of publications in Europe and North America, reporting on agriculture, biotechnology and the environment.  Back to top

Elaine is a graduate in horticulture from Wye College, University of London, and has an MSc from Toronto University. She worked for May & Baker and Shell International Chemical Company before becoming a specialist writer and publisher in the crop protection sector. Elaine was the founding publisher and editor of the International Crop Protection Directory, the Who's Who of the crop protection world. The rights to this directory were acquired by Agricultural Information Services Ltd, as reported in the October 2003 edition of  Crop Protection Monthly.  Back to top

© Market Scope Europe Ltd