Brent Clothier is a Principal Scientist with Plant & Food Research. He is based in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Brent is also an Adjunct Professor in the New Zealand Life Cycle Management Centre of Massey University, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Agriculture & the Environment at Lincoln University.  Brent is also an Adjunct Professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, China. Brent has co-supervised 26 graduate students from 5 Universities in 4 countries, and he has examined 39 graduate theses from 15 Universities across 5 countries. Brent is President of Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Brent has a BSc (Hons) from Canterbury University, and a PhD and DSc from Massey University. Brent is a Fellow of Royal Society Te Apārangi, and the New Zealand Society of Soil Science. He is also a Fellow of four foreign science academies: Soil Science Society of America; American Agronomy Society; American Geophysical Union and; an Academician (Foreign) of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Brent was awarded the Don & Betty Kirkham Soil Physics Award of the Soil Science Society of America in 2000. He was awarded the J.A Prescott Medal by Soil Science Australia in 2001, and the L.I. Grange Medal by the New Zealand Society of Soil Science in 2014. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Science New Zealand in 2019.

Brent has published over 300 scientific papers on the movement and fate of water, carbon and chemicals in the root–zones of primary production systems, irrigation allocation and water management, plus sustainable vineyard and orchard practices, including adaptation strategies in the face of climate change. He also published on life-cycle assessment, carbon and water footprinting, environmental policy, investment into ecological infrastructure, plus natural capital quantification and the valuation of ecosystem services. Brent is an Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Agricultural Water Management (IF=4.052).

Brent was President of the New Zealand Soil Science Society between 2008 and 2010. He received the Sir Arthur Ward Trophy for Scientific Communication from the New Zealand Institute for Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences in 2013. Brent was selected to give the Nyle C. Brady Frontiers of Soil Science Lecture by the Soil Science Society of America in 2015. Brent gave a keynote address at the Symposium on Ecological Restoration and Efficient Utilization of Water Resources in Semi-arid Regions in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, China, in July 2018. He also gave a plenary address at the Forum on Irrigation and Drainage Development and Technological Innovation of the Belt and Road sponsored by the Institute of Water and Hydropower Research in Beijing, China in 2019.

Brent has been, or is still involved in water-related aid and development projects in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as in the Middle East, China, and Africa.