Horticulture student Richard Killian has landed a research fellowship that will give him hands-on experience of glasshouse growing.

The second year undergraduate studying for a BSc in Commercial Horticulture at Hadlow College was awarded the 2013 Thanet Earth Discovery Fellowship. It is the second year that the specialist vegetable growing complex has offered a fellowship.

It will give Richard the opportunity for paid work on new product development (NPD) in a college glasshouse equipped with a growing system that would be found in the commercial world.

Robert James, technical manager at Thanet Earth, said: “NPD can be pretty complicated, We have identified NPD as a clear opportunity for Thanet Earth to help provide a student with new skills and genuine commercial experience – something that can be very hard to provide in a college setting.”

Thanet Earth hopes that Richard’s work will yield new information that Thanet Earth can take forward to commercial greenhouse trials and ultimately the consumer.

Thanet Earth is a state-of-the-art greenhouse development. When completed the site will feature seven enormous greenhouses producing tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers for supermarkets with the aim of making the UK more self-sufficient in food production.

Hadlow, a leading UK land-based colleges, offers one of the few degree programmes in production horticulture.