SCOTS farmer's daughter Professor Lorna Dawson who has developed advanced soil forensic techniques is lending her expertise in helping discover what happened to toddler Ben Needham, who disappeared on Kos 26 years ago.

Human blood was reportedly found on a toy car and sandal believed to belong to the child which mother Kerry Needham says is evidence of a cover-up in the disappearance of her son, who was staying at his grandparents' farmhouse on the Greek island.

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Police believe Ben was crushed to death by digger driver Konstantinos 'Dino' Barkasin in a tragic accident close to the farmhouse where he was last seen in 1991 and where the sandal was found in 2012.

Operating from the Aberdeen-based James Hutton Institute, she runs one of the world's only laboratories dedicated to forensic soil science and it is estimated that in ten years she will have worked on more than 70 cases around the world. Her work ranges from wildlife and environmental crime to civil and criminal law and she has also been an adviser on the TV crime series drama Vera and to award-winning author Ann Cleeves.

The soil sleuth who grew up on a farm in Angus, used her techniques to help in the conviction of serial killer and rapist Angus Sinclair who was jailed for a minimum of 37 years for the murders of two teenagers at the World's End pub on Edinburgh's Royal Mile in 1977.

In 2007 when Sinclair first faced a jury for the murders, soil forensic methods were not good enough to convict him.

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Angus Sinclair

But advances in science and DNA since then meant that instead of needing at least a thimbleful of soil to make an analysis, Prof Dawson can work with soil the of a grain of rice.

And in 2014, in the main thanks to new techniques developed by Professor Dawson, they were robust enough to refute his alibi.

In the World End's case, the geology undergraduate worked on the ligature that was tied round one of the girls necks and were able to determine that Sinclair had tied it.

And Sinclair, who had beaten, raped and strangled Helen Scott and Christine Eadie, both 17, became the first person in Scotland to be re-tried for the same crime after a change in the double jeopardy law.

She was a key witness in last year's trial of taxi driver Christopher Halliwell who was sentenced to a new life term after being found guilty of the murder of Becky Godden in Swiundon more than a decade ago.

Halliwell had already been serving a life-sentence for the murder of 22-year-old Sian O'Callaghan, who he abducted in his taxi as she made her way home from a night out in Swindon in March 2011.

Ms Dawson got soil samples from tools and other items taken from Halliwell's house and compared them with soil taken by the forensic archaeologists who worked at the site of the grave beside Becky's remains to see if they were similar.

The Herald: Alexander Pacteau

Her soil forensics also helped convict Alexander Pacteau (above), 21, of the murder of Irish student Karen Buckley, 24, in Glasgow in April 2015 and Adrian Muir, 51, who was jailed in Newcastle in 2013 for the murder of his partner Pamela Jackson, 55, who he buried on moors above Halifax. 

The James Hutton Institute was formed in April 2011, by uniting the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and the Scottish Crop Research Institute.

The organisation has offices and laboratories in Aberdeen and Dundee and employs approximately 550 staff. It also supports postgraduate students.