Dr Debbie Rees is a plant physiologist at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich where she has undertaken research on handling and storage of a wide range of perishable crops both in the UK and overseas. She currently has projects working on apple, pear, broccoli, swede and cabbage in the UK, on yams in West Africa, sweet potato in East Africa as well as high value commodities imported into the UK such as avocado, grape. She was instrumental in setting up the Produce Quality Centre a collaborative initiative with NIAB EMR.