Student Ellen’s expertise lands Dairymaster award
ELLEN FITZPATRICK, a past pupil of St. Mary’s Secondary School, is one of two students at Waterford Institute of Technology ( WIT) to be awarded a final year project award in the Dairymaster Awards.
The final year student was studying Agricultural Science. Ellen lives in New Ross with her family. Ellen explains that following the 4th year project presentations, nine students were shortlisted to present their projects to Dairymaster.
On May 24, two representatives of Dairymaster travelled to WIT to watch the presentations and they chose Ellen and another student.
Ellen’s project was called ‘An evaluation of grass quality for milk, beef and sheep production using efficient and environmentally sustainable chemical fertiliser’.
This involved three different grass varieties and six different fertiliser treatments in which the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions were measured along with a number of nutritive parameters such as DM and crude protein of theses grass samples.
This measured the sustainability of the fertiliser treatments, while also taking the nutritive value of grass into account.
Ellen said: ‘It was an absolute honour to win the Dairymaster award, especially with the extremely high standard of final year projects evident among the final year students in WIT this year. I also thought it was fantastic that two women won the award this year, I feel this a testimony to the equal opportunities given to women in agriculture here at WIT.’
Ellen plans to continue her education and is starting a PhD in the Teagasc Centre in Moorepart this October in grassland.