After only four months in charge, professor Elaine Watson, the chief executive officer of the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) has resigned from her post.

In a statement on the AFBI website, prof Watson cited “personal reasons” for her early departure. She will remain as CEO until the end of October.

In the short period that she was in charge, prof Watson had proposed making a number of major changes to the troubled organisation, and had begun a process to review all current activities. Included within those changes was the decision to remove a tier of senior management under the CEO. She was also understood to be keen to foster stronger links with Queen's University Belfast.

While not everyone might have bought into her approach, it is generally accepted that AFBI requires some major decisions to be made.

That comes on the back of budget pressures, which have already forced AFBI to cut staff from 805 at the start of 2015-16 to 639 by 2016-17. With a medium-term financial plan forecasting an annual deficit increasing to £7.2m by 2019-20, further downsizing of the organisation looks inevitable.