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Expert has a First Class honours degree in botany during which he specialised in mycology, plant pathology and taxonomy. He took his doctorate in forest pathology, specialising in canker diseases of forest trees. For fourteen years he was engaged in research on the biology and control of vegetable diseases using a wide range of techniques and approaches. For the past 31 years he has advised on the biology and control of the diseases of many temperate and tropical crops. He is the author of a book that has been the standard work of reference on the pests and diseases of garden plants for thirty-four years. He is the author of standard works of reference on the fungi of Britain and Europe. He is double Past-President of the British Mycological Society, the largest and oldest society in the world devoted to the study and conservation of fungi.He has received numerous awards and honours including the Veitch Memorial Medal in Gold of the Royal Horticultural Society and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Garden Media Guild [UK]. He has written around 60 books, over 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers, many thousands of newspaper and magazine articles and photographs and contributed to over 2000 radio and television programmes on gardening /horticulture.

He advised successfully in an action concerning the needle drop of Nordmann for Christmas trees imported to the U.K. from Denmark. By identifying and replicating the conditions under which the trees had been transported and stored, he was able to demonstrate that the defect was due to the conditions after landing the trees in the U.K. and not while they were in Denmark.He advised successfully in an action concerning the contamination of vegetable propagating compost with club root disease and was able to demonstrate that the contamination arose from the bogs where the peat originated, and not at the farms where it was used.He advised successfully in an action concerning the loss of a glasshouse chrysanthemum crop by demonstrating that the crop loss was due to a faulty carbon dioxide generator and not to any other cause.He advised successfully in an action concerning the origin of copper deficiency symptoms in a glasshouse tomato crop by demonstrating that the potting compost used was defective.He advised successfully in an action concerning an excessive claim for costs in an extensive and high value garden design undertaken by a leading garden designer by demonstrating poor workmanship and defective accounting by the contractors responsible.