Tom Ashfield

Tom earned a PhD while working in the Sainsbury Laboratory, where he researched the defence response of resistant tomato varieties to leaf mould.

He conducted postdoctoral work at Indiana University, with a focus on disease resistance in soybean (both the genetic basis and how it evolves).

After returning to the UK, Tom played a leading role in the establishment of an image-based phenotyping laboratory based at Rothamsted Research, before joining AHDB in 2026.