Weeds Biocontrol team
The Manaaki Whenua Weeds Biocontrol team
Manaaki Whenua’s Weeds Biocontrol team had a successful evening at the NZ Biosecurity Awards in late October 2022. Members of the team contribute to B3: Better Border Biosecurity, which won the Science Award. Ronny Groenteman and Quentin Paynter joined the group who accepted the award.
Grant Norbury
Grant Norbury
Wildlife ecologist Grant Norbury has won the 2022 Outstanding Publication for New Zealand Ecology from the New Zealand Ecological Society, for a paper in Science Advances – Misinformation tactics protect rare birds from problem predators – for which Grant was the lead author.
Catriona Mcleod
Catriona Macleod
Catriona Mcleod, an ecologist at Manaaki Whenua, has received the Cranwell Medal for excellence in science communication from the New Zealand Association of Scientists. Catriona was nominated for her work leading the Trustworthy Biodiversity Indicators programme, creating an exciting yet respectful conversation between scientists and people in diverse communities, applying creative ways to engage on a range of platforms, from social media channels through to group discussions kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face).
Science New Zealand Awards
At the annual Science New Zealand Awards in Wellington in December 2022, Surinder Saggar was awarded an Individual/Lifetime Achievement award for his research over four decades of agricultural greenhouse gas sources and sinks, and the microbial processes regulating the loss of agricultural nitrogen to the atmosphere. Patrick Garvey was recognised as an Early Career Researcher for his work on the role of smell in predator interactions and how this can be used in pest management, and our Mycology and Bacteriology team received a Team award for their invaluable and wide-ranging expertise in biosecurity and biodiversity.
Fieldays
Our stand at Fieldays 2022
At Fieldays, New Zealand farming’s annual showcase event at Mystery Creek outside Hamilton, held in December 2022, Manaaki Whenua joined colleagues from AgResearch and NIWA on a stand in the Pavilion where we demonstrated our soil mapping resource S-map Online and let visitors play a virtual drone game to profile our remote sensing work. Kaihautū Nikki Harcourt was also on the stand to profile a case study highlighting Manaaki Whenua’s support of Māori landowners in the Waiapū Valley, North Island, to make land-use decisions best suited to the characteristics of their land blocks.
John Dando
John Dando
John Dando, who recently retired from Manaaki Whenua’s soil physics laboratory in Palmerston North after 30 years’ service, was awarded the New Zealand Society of Soil Science’s biennial national award (the Blakemore Award) in December 2022, in recognition of his significant technical contribution to soil science.