I recently stumbled upon some groundbreaking agricultural research that’s actually not about grass or clover for once.

It’s about skincare and it involves spuds – one of my favourite things... the spuds that is, my skincare routine wouldn’t win any awards.

Scientists from the University of Aberdeen are part of a research team seeking to turn potato waste into moisturisers and the like. The Scottish seed potato industry, worth £24.2m, generates over 51,000t of potato shaws annually. Shaws, for the uniniated, are the leaves of the potato plant.

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The project aims to extract solanesol from the discarded shaws, a compound vital for producing key enzymes and vitamins for many different skincare products.

Talk about diversification.