Our Trial Partners

Callaghan Innovation is New Zealand’s Innovation Agency. They activate innovation and help businesses grow faster for a better New Zealand, through funding, access to experts, R&D and innovation support.

Gina van der Klei

Gina is passionate about unravelling nutrient management decisions within complex systems. She grew up on an arable farm in Canterbury so understands the realities of making decisions on farm and later gained experience as a technician working in the dairy industry. As a researcher in the Plant & Food Research Cropping Systems and Environment group, she combines her passion for farming with her interest in science, putting her Bachelor of Science and Post Graduate Diploma in Ecology to work.  

Over the 10 years at Plant & Food Research Gina’s work has been focused on mitigating nitrogen losses from farming systems. Her work has considered how different grazing and irrigation scenarios effect nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions. Asking the questions; what are the impacts of dairy grazing of pasture vs rape, how is soil compaction effected, how do different irrigation rates and intensities effect nitrogen losses? Gina is responsible for managing large field and lysimeter trials that aim to answer these questions and has heavy involvement right from the planning stages through to data analysis and interpretation of results. She also enjoys that at times the role has a highly technical component, requiring her to install complex sensing networks and run automated systems.

Alex Michel

Plants and their amazing abilities have always fascinated Alex. Back home in New Caledonia, he studied botany before pursuing a Master of Science of Agronomy and Plant Pathology in France. He since has focused on New Zealand farming systems and their cropping components.  

Alex’s focus is currently environmental issues associated with nitrogen losses from farming activity, in particular nitrate leaching. Alex is passionate about new technology in farming systems, and has extensive experience with automated sensor systems that measure plant and environmental variables in field trials.

He is currently part of the Field Crops Physiology team and based at the Lincoln site near Christchurch. With over a decade of research experience Alex manages the planning, execution and delivery of research that help solve key challenges facing the farming industry.

Steven Dellow

Steve has been passionate about agriculture from a very early age. Helping out on family farms grew this interest into a desire to help farmers maximize productivity in an environmentally sustainable way. With this motivation Steve gained his Bachelor of Science (Honours) at Lincoln University in 2012, and jumped straight into working with the Cropping Systems and Environment Group at Plant & Food Research, Lincoln. Here he was able to turn that passion into a reality.

At Plant & Food Research, Steve has worked on a range of arable and horticultural crops and research areas ranging from soil-borne disease in potatoes to fertiliser and water-use efficiency. His current projects have him involved in helping to reduce nitrate leaching from pastoral and vegetable cropping systems. 

For Steve the challenge of undertaking complex and critical research provides an opportunity to learn something new. These challenges and the diversity of research keeps things interesting and fuels his passion for helping farmers to make a difference not only to their bottom line, but to the environment in which we live in.

Robert Ward

Robert has been interested in physical sciences since childhood. At the University of Canterbury he specialised in atmospheric physics, completing a Master of Science thesis on sea ice and atmospheric dynamics around Antarctica.

Robert subsequently pivoted into horticulture where much of his research focuses on climate-crop interactions. A large portion of his work has looked at crop suitability and land use decision-making for many diverse clients all over New Zealand, including private landowners, councils and Māori groups. He also has significant hands-on experience with weather stations and other environmental sensors used in a wide range of projects. Always keen to give new things a go, he has also branched out into GIS mapping work and computerized image analysis.

Robert is currently based at Plant & Food Research in Palmerston North, and his work has taken him across much of the country.

Stephen Trolove

Stephen grew up on a sheep and cattle farm, and has always had a passion for plants. The Soil Science subjects that formed part of his Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree at Massey University opened up a whole new field of learning for him about how soils affected plant growth. He pursued this interest with a PhD in Soil Science based at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and at Massey University.

Since 2001 he has been a Soil Scientist at Plant & Food Research, covering a wide range of subjects, including plant nutrition. Stephen enjoys applied projects where the science can help industry. He has also enjoyed international development projects in South East Asia, using science to help farmers improve the management of their crops.

Brendon Malcolm

Brendon was brought up in Nelson, New Zealand, on a mixed enterprise farm consisting of dairy cows, a stone fruit and pip fruit orchard, and boysenberries. From a young lad he had a strong interest in farming and was putting cups on cows when physically able.

Brendon went to Lincoln University in 2004 and studied a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Honours). His initial intention was to become a dairy consultant and eventually go farming, but a taste for research during his Honours year, looking at the effect of DCD (a nitrification inhibitor) on pasture nitrate concentrations, saw him continue on in research. His PhD studied the effects of pasture species composition on nitrate leaching losses, leading him to a postdoctoral position at Lincoln University where he joined a highly collaborative research team to study dairy systems research for high productivity and reduced environmental impact.

Brendon has been a scientist at Plant & Food Research since 2014, and currently leads the Soil Function and Health team. His area of research is nitrate leaching losses from forage crop systems, which largely involves quantifying losses from grazed winter forage crops and identifying mitigation technologies (e.g. catch crops, soil amendments) that immobilise N and improve environmental outcomes.

Outside of work, Brendon has a love for the outdoors and sport in general; in particular, a keen hunter-gatherer both on the land and in the sea.