Contact Dr Emily Guest
- Tel: 01234 758268
- Email: Emily.Guest@cranfield.ac.uk
- Twitter:
Background
Emily joined ÂãÁÄÖ±²¥ in January 2024 as a Research Fellow in Soil and Plant Science, based within Cranfield Environment Centre. Her research examines the role of legumes and diversified crop rotations in reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and improving soil health, with a particular focus on nitrogen cycling and soil structure.
Before joining Cranfield, Emily spent two years as a Crop Research Consultant at RSK ADAS Ltd, managing on-farm small-plot and multi-field tramline trials for clients across the agrochemical and agri-food industries. She completed her PhD in Soil Biochemistry at the University of Sheffield in 2021, studying the role of grass-clover leys in improving soil structure and carbon storage in arable rotations, following an MBiolSci in Biology, also at Sheffield.
Emily is an active member of The British Society of Soil Science (BSSS), acts as committee member on the Early Career Professionals (ECPro) group of The Association of Applied Biologists (AAB), and is Centre representative for Cranfield's Early Career Researcher Network (ECRn).
Research opportunities
Emily's research goal is to advance knowledge and decision support for resilient, sustainable agroecosystems, generating better data on plant-soil-atmosphere interactions to inform land management that is productive, profitable and delivers ecosystem services such as greenhouse gas reduction and flood mitigation.
She has a particular interest in sustainable agro-ecosystems at the rotation scale, including diversifying rotations with grass-clover leys, break crops (e.g. oats, legumes), and improving the sustainability of livestock production through more farm-produced or UK-grown feed. Emily also has an interest in bringing technology and information to agriculture, including metrics, dynamic benchmarking and remote sensing to inform decisions.
Emily currently supervises projects on legume intercropping and nitrogen management in African agroecosystems, and welcomes additional enquiries from prospective PhD and Masters students interested in these areas.
Current activities
Nitrogen Climate Smart (NCS). Sponsor: Defra (2022–2027).
A large consortium project investigating the potential for UK-grown grain legumes to mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas emissions through fertiliser reduction and replacement of soybeans in livestock diets. Emily's work focuses on better quantifying the temporal and spatial availability of biologically fixed nitrogen, to improve the data and advice available to farmers looking to reduce synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use.
SOILL StepUp. Funder: European Union, Horizon Europe programme (2026-2028).
SOILL-StepUp supports the EU Mission "A Soil Deal for Europe," providing coordination, training, knowledge exchange and monitoring for the network of 100 Soil Health Living Labs and Lighthouses working to restore soil health across Europe by 2030. Emily acts as facilitator of the project's Soil Biodiversity Working Group, working alongside colleague Professor Jim Harris to support the group's knowledge exchange activities. Her contribution includes designing and producing practitioner-facing outputs, including a monitoring questionnaire distributed across the Living Lab network, to inform both a peer-reviewed paper and a practical resource for new and existing Living Labs.