A leading farming journalist, whose work appeared in two Scottish regional newspapers, has died aged 72.

Ian Morrison retired as farming editor of The Herald in Glasgow in the mid-1990s.

He began his working life at The Scotsman, starting as a copy boy and stepping up into subbing before becoming assistant editor on the agricultural desk.

Ian then moved on to the Scottish Daily Express to specialise in farming, before moving to the Press and Journal to become farming editor by the late 1960s. He continued to contribute to the Press & Journal in Aberdeen after his retirement.

His work over the years was recognised as some of the best coverage of rural affairs and he was a recipient of the Netherthorpe Award for outstanding achievement in agriculture journalism in 1988.

He was the only person to have twice been chairman of the British Guild of Agriculture Journalists of Great Britain, taking on the role in 1974 and 1981. He was guild president in 1987 when Britain hosted the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists conference. In 1997 he was made a senior fellow of the 600-member guild, one of only five in its history.

One of his contemporaries, Fordyce Maxwell, paid tribute, saying: "On form, and he usually was, no journalist could sum up an event, a speech or a press conference more concisely.

"No matter how well we thought we had written a story, Ian's report next morning was the benchmark.

"We, his colleagues on other papers, wish it, and his dry, pawky, asides still were."