12 Questions
Jennifer Dann led the team of scientists that saved the kiwifruit industry from the Psa bacteria, winning this year’s Prime Minister’s Science Prize. The Plant and Food Research boss believes biological solutions are our best defence against threats to f
1When multi-disciplinary team of more than 100 scientists to find a solution. 2In
Science is very risk averse. When scientists make a statement, they want to be 99 per cent confident it’s correct, having done a wide range of tests over a long period of time. We didn’t have that luxury so at certain points we’d have to make a call based on the odds being better than 50 per cent. We’d try to narrow the range of options and then do the more stringent testing afterwards. 3What
We’d been testing hundreds of
what ways did the time pressures force you to work differently? was the scariest call you had to make?
varieties of kiwifruit for tolerance to Psa and had one cultivar, Gold3, that looked promising. It wasn’t fully resistant but we thought it might work in combination with improved monitoring and spraying. We only had one crack at this new variety because orchardists had to cut off all their vines and replant them. We hadn’t tested it on a regional scale so we were in uncharted territory. A lot of people were losing a lot of sleep. We worked incredibly long hours to reduce the risk to the absolute minimum. I’m absolutely delighted we were able to do it.
4Has
the
Psa case changed the way you prepare for potential