Agriculture & Farming Authors

This page introduces the authors who write for the Agriculture & Farming section of CAB Direct, which appears as Agriculture in the site navigation and is collected at /agriculture/. The section covers regenerative farming, precision agriculture, GM crops and biotechnology, and agricultural markets and subsidies, together with related subjects such as plant breeding, seed banks, organic and conventional systems, irrigation, yield gaps, and food loss and waste.

Author profiles on CAB Direct are editorial personas, and each one is described on its own profile page. The table and summaries below give every author's role, listed credentials, affiliation and areas of coverage. CABI launched CAB Direct in 2003 as its own platform for CAB Abstracts, as recorded on CABI's history page; this page concerns only the authors of the current Agriculture section, not that historical database. For background on the wider project, see About CAB Direct.

The Agriculture team

All five members of the Agriculture team hold the role of Author and joined in September 2026. Each name links to the author's profile page.

Team profiles

Harriet Colbeck

Harriet Colbeck is an author for the Agriculture & Farming section. Her profile lists a BSc in Agriculture and an MSc in Soil Science, and her affiliation is the CAB Direct Editorial Team. She covers regenerative farming, soil organic matter, cover crops, reduced tillage and nutrient management. Her articles explain what field studies measured, how long the trials ran and how far the results apply to farms with different soils and climates.

Tobias Mardle

Tobias Mardle is an author for the Agriculture & Farming section. His profile lists a BEng in Agricultural Engineering, and his affiliation is the CAB Direct Editorial Team. He covers precision agriculture: yield mapping, soil and crop sensors, variable-rate application, drones and decision-support software. His articles separate what a technology has been shown to do in trials from what manufacturers claim, and note the costs and conditions that affect results on working farms.

Callum Hebden

Callum Hebden is an author for the Agriculture & Farming section. His profile lists a BSc in Agricultural Economics and an MSc in Food Policy, and his affiliation is the CAB Direct Editorial Team. He covers agricultural markets and prices, farm subsidies and support schemes, land use, and the regulation and farm-level economics of GM and gene-edited crops. His articles explain how studies model costs, incomes and policy effects, and where their assumptions limit the conclusions.

Anjali Dhanjal

Anjali Dhanjal is an author for the Agriculture & Farming section. Her profile lists a BSc in Plant Science and an MSc in Plant Breeding, and her affiliation is the CAB Direct Editorial Team. She covers plant breeding, the science of GM and gene-edited crops, GMO detection, crop origins including the Vavilov centres of origin, seed banks and crop diversity, and Bt crops and non-target organisms. Her articles explain what a genetic change does in the plant, how studies tested it and which laboratory or glasshouse results have not yet been confirmed in the field.

Nuala Keaveney

Nuala Keaveney is an author for the Agriculture & Farming section. Her profile lists a BAgrSc and an MSc in Sustainable Agriculture, and her affiliation is the CAB Direct Editorial Team. She covers organic and conventional farming, irrigation methods, yield gap research, vertical farming, food loss and waste, and agroforestry trials. Her articles set out how each comparison was made, whether yields were measured per hectare or across a rotation, and what a meta-analysis can settle.

Editorial roles and checks

The Agriculture roster lists authors only; this page does not name reviewers or editors for the section. Authors prepare articles within their stated coverage areas. Coverage overlaps on GM and gene-edited crops, which Anjali Dhanjal covers from the plant science side and Callum Hebden from the side of regulation and farm-level economics.

According to the author profiles, every Agriculture article:

• names its author and gives the author's stated role;
• gives each figure, such as a trial yield, a price or a support payment, with its source and date;
• has its claims and figures checked against traceable sources;
• shows any correction with its date, and the correction stays visible in the article.

Editorial standards and evidence

The rules for sourcing, writing and updating articles across CAB Direct are set out in the editorial policy. The approach used to assess evidence is described on the How we rate evidence page. Together, these site-wide pages provide the wider framework for how Agriculture articles are prepared, sourced and corrected.

Corrections and contact

To report a possible error in an Agriculture article, use the corrections page. Questions about the authors or the section can be sent through /contacts/. The full list of CAB Direct authors is at /authors/, and the section hub is at /agriculture/.