Ruairidh Bain

Ruairidh Bain is a Researcher at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), based at the JF Niven Building in SAC Consulting, Ayr. His primary role involves field trials and crop disease management, focusing on late blight (Phytophthora infestans) and early blight (Rhizoctonia solani) in potato crops. He leads and collaborates on projects funded by the Scottish Government's RESAS Strategic Research Programme, aiming to improve disease control strategies through integrated approaches combining host resistance and fungicide optimization.

His research emphasizes fungicide efficacy evaluation, cultivar resistance durability, and epidemiological modeling of plant pathogens. Key projects include developing decision aids for curative fungicide timing and assessing how reduced fungicide inputs can be balanced with resistant cultivars. Bain's work contributes to EuroBlight initiatives, establishing standardized efficacy ratings for blight control products.

Notable grants include leading the 'Improved timing of curative blight fungicides' project (2014–2020) and contributing to multi-institutional efforts under RESAS 2016–2027. He has published extensively on late blight dynamics, fungicide strategies, and cultivar resistance sustainability, with 25+ peer-reviewed outputs since 1996.

Bain's expertise spans field trials, disease surveillance, and stakeholder engagement to translate research into practical agricultural solutions. His labs and teams operate within SAC's field trial infrastructure, focusing on applied plant pathology and sustainable crop protection.