And as you can see (above) a family of Meerkats, scanning the horizon, working as a team, is lesson No 1.
The second is, ‘adapt fast and with care’ which David translates into shorthand. It means ‘don’t be a luddite’.
The third is ride the funding wave, and this correlates to David’s own career-defining research on endophytes, a wave he’s still riding.
David believes the lessons which were learned and relearned during his career, are as relevant today as they have ever been given the current science sector is being reviewed, funding is tight and opportunities seemingly scarce.
The bit that is missing, from the slides at least, is the how. The how do you adapt, how do you ride a funding wave, and how do you look for opportunities?
For that we’ll need to delve a little deeper into David’s story and go back to where it all began.
David enjoys getting his hands dirty in the field and staying connected and talking directly to farmers. "It's where our best ideas often come from".
David is a Cantabrian, and he was born and raised in a house beside a main Christchurch thoroughfare. In cities today, houses beside utilitarian infrastructure such as four-laned carriageways that link an airport to a CBD, are at best nondescript. However, Memorial Avenue was, and still is, home to some of the city’s most preeminent gardens.
In spring they burst with colour. They are a rare confluence of green thumbed and house proud homeowners. David’s father was an ordered man and loved his garden. This instilled in his son an early love for the environment. After graduating high school, he enrolled at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University), and majored in agricultural science. He excelled and had his pick of a handful of jobs upon graduation. He chose the DSIR at Grasslands. Opportunities abounded including a sponsored a scholarship to become the first New Zealander to study for and be awarded a PhD from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
David and his wife Karen returned home from their three-year stint in the Netherlands with two children and put down roots in Palmerston North. During a short scholarship in Victoria, Australia, in the mid-1990s, he developed professional connections and worked on endophyte trials.
Endophytes are fungi that live inside the tissues of many plants. They form a finely balanced interrelationship where the endophyte protects the plant from pests in return for nutrients and a safe home.
Scientists had discovered they could transfer them from plants from different parts of the world and put them into productive NZ cultivars. And David, ever alert to an opportunity, used his agronomy skills to grow and test them in plots and paddocks.
“Alison Popay (a fellow senior scientist) and I seem to get a lot of credit for this work but really, we were just part of a big and special team – and we’re simply the last ones standing!”
