Raul Huertas

Research Leader
Environmental and Biochemical Sciences
T: +44 (0)138 256 8838
  • Raul leads and contributes to multiple research projects on crop resilience and sustainability. He seeks to understand how plants, particularly legumes, naturally adapt to environmental stresses, find solutions that overcome limitations, and leverage this knowledge to improve cultivars, including food quality traits.
  • Raul serves as a Science Challenge Leader at the James Hutton Institute and temporarily as a Scientific Manager at the Advanced Plant Growth Center (APGC).

Discovery-oriented research:

Natural resilience to abiotic stress: understanding physiological and molecular responses, adaptive strategies and limitations

  • Harness natural genetic diversity to improve physiological-agronomic traits for farmers and nutraceutical traits for human/feed consumption and/or industry
  • Responses to environmental stresses | Avoidance and tolerance mechanisms | Overcoming limitations
  • Crop-agnostic for research, but biased towards legumes/pulses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translational research:

Adapting the environment to crops (indoor agriculture) or selecting the right variety for the environmental conditions

Common bean genotypes
Lettuce cultivars
Photosynthetic traits in potato mutants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Projects:

  • 2024-2027 “Light Pulsing in Vertical Farming For Sustainable Fresh Produce – LightPuls-VF”.  Co-Principal Investigator (PI),  £582k. BBSRC/Innovate UK/Industrial Partner – Intelligent Growth Solutions Ltd.
  • 2024-2027 “Exploiting Controlled Environments for the Development of Optimised Cannabis Sativa Phenotypes for Pharmaceutical Applications – CE-CannPharm”. Co-PI, £664k. BBSRC/Innovate UK/Industrial Partner – GlassPharms Ltd.
  • 2024-2027 “Optimising Genetics by Management (GxM) Interactions to Enhance Productivity and Quality in Indoor Lettuce Cultivation – GxM-Lettuce”. Researcher. BBSRC/Innovate UK/Industrial Partners – Intelligent Growth Solutions Ltd and Tozer Seeds Ltd.
  • 2024-2029 “National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre – NAPIC”. Researcher Co-Investigator.  BBSRC/Innovate UK/Industry/Stakeholders.
  • 2023-2024 “Machine learning for identifying leaf reflectance proxies for rapidly deriving crop photosynthetic parameters – MLSynth”. PI, £20k Hutton Seedcorn Proof of Concept.

Past research

  • 2021-2023 “Upscaling adoption and exploitation of a wide diversity of Iron and Zinc-rich beans by rural populations in Africa – ZIRON Pulse“. Researcher. BBSRC/Innovate UK

Journals

Prior to appointment