Eric Holub

Professor Holub is a geneticist, systems-thinker and a fellow of Warwick Institute of Engagement. He applies his experience to genetic improvement of food crops and public access to affordable food diversity. Recently, he has been selecting Meso-american crops for UK production including common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and herbs. The aim is to enable a food system that better serves public health using seed, soil and British sunshine. The UK is a nation of bean and tomato eaters-- served for example on toast or jacket potato. With this in mind, Professor Holub is working to establish new varieties of our favourite pulse, the common bean, for cooking with other home-grown ingredients. Provenance, convenience and versatility are key, especially knowing that all of ingredients in a commercial tin of navy beans in tomato sauce are imported. Thus, National Listing was obtained for three bean varieties: Capulet (looks like an imported navy bean), Godiva (a novel blonde kidney-like bean) and Olivia (an oval black bean). Participatory research with consumers was launched in Coventry for the 2019 British Science Festival [For more information see: www.2BHealthyGB.com]. In February 2023, he registered a company (Nurtural Limited) with five co-directors which will transition into a social enterprise with a mission of 'connecting Ambassadors of Change (from kitchens and gardens and farms) for rejuvenating food environments in every community.'

[2025] Ingram, John, Barling, David, Bayes, Natasha, Cottee, Julian, Dickinson, Angela, Hardman, Charlotte, Holub, Eric B., Jones, Katie, Leadley, Craig, Maguire, Roseanne, Michaels, Lucy, Midgley, Gerald, Rajagopalan, Raghav, Zhang, Jing and Zurek, Monika (2025) Fork to farm : reverse engineering a food system. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 380 (1935). 20240158. doi:10.1098/rstb.2024.0158 ISSN 0962-8436. [2024] Nirwan, Shradha, Chatterjee, Anupriya, Cevik, Volkan, Holub, Eric B., Jones, Jonathan D. G., Tewari, Anand Kumar, Shrivastava, Neeraj, Agnihotri, Abha and Sharma, Pankaj (2024) Genetic manipulation of Indian mustard genotypes with WRR-gene(s) confers resistance against Albugo candida. Molecular Biology Reports, 51 . 199. doi:10.1007/s11033-