Judith is the Science lead for Plant Pathology within the Plant Protection Programme at Fera. She is a plant pathologist with over 25 years’ research experience focussing on disease surveillance, pathogen epidemiology, disease management and disease risk forecasting.

This has included her long-term involvement and leadership of the Defra Crop Pest and Disease surveys which have been conducted annually for more than forty years and management of the CropMonitorTM Information Service, a risk prediction service for wheat diseases first launched in 2003. During her career Judith has led numerous research projects on both indigenous and quarantine plant pathogens including several major projects for Defra on evaluating the threats from Phytophthora ramorum and ash dieback to plants in the UK. More recently Judith has been leading the development of a new SMART Decision Support Service, one of the new capabilities being developed for the Crop Health and Protection Centre (CHAP), set up in 2016 through funding from Innovate UK. As part of the establishment of CHAP she is also involved in the development of a National Resistance and Virulence Management Unit to support the industry in dealing with the latest threats from changes in pathogen virulence and fungicide resistance.

Judith is also a member of the UK Fungicide Resistance Group (FRAG-UK).