Fast boat for red meat urged

Napier-based Focus Genetics scientist Natalie Pickering, a finalist in the national Sheep Industry Awards emerging talent category. Winners will be announced in Masterton next Wednesday.

Leading national Sheep Industry Awards Hawke's Bay hope and Focus Genetics rising star scientist Natalie Pickering wants to help "make the boat go faster" for New Zealand's primary sector through genetic gains in red meat.

Napier-based Dr Pickering, 31, an Emerging Talent category finalist for the awards in Masterton next Wednesday, says she hopes her work with leading red meat genetic company Focus Genetics will encourage more breeders and consequently farmers to use genomic technology to enhance profitability.

"I see huge potential in creating a more efficient, consistent, greater valued products - not just more product doing the same old thing," she says.

It was her natural curiosity as a teenager for how genetics work that led her to the primary sector and Focus Genetics is enabling her to put her research experience and learning to work.

"I'm working out how to communicate the science ideas into industry practice and extending my mind to think about the overall picture of the red meat sector."

Dr Pickering has a PhD in Animal Science between Massey University and AgResearch, where she investigated the genetics of flystrike, dagginess and associated traits.

A shear test

World champion Rowland Smith and fellow Hawke's Bay shearer John Kirkpatrick will have barely set foot in the UK when they shear a test match against Scotland at the Lochearnhead Shears on Saturday.

But it won't be so much the short preparation as the opposition they have to overcome, including Taranaki-based Scotsman and dual world shearing champion Gavin Mutch who has won four competitions in a row in a short fling back home, including wins on successive days at the Royal Highland Show, Edinburgh, last weekend.

His Scottish National Championship win on Friday sealed a place at the world championships in Invercargill in February. Mutch won the individual title in 2012, and Smith won in Ireland in 2014, when Mutch and Lochearnhead shearer Hamish Mitchell beat Smith and Kirkpatrick in the teams final.

The Feds' gongs

Six people have been recognised in the Federated Farmers inaugural annual conference awards, for excellence in agriculture and their efforts to enhance the primary industries.

The awards were announced during the conference on Monday and Tuesday and went to Federated Farmers' Bee Industry Group chairman John Hartnell MNZM, from Canterbury, Manawatu-Rangitikei provincial president James Stewart, Federated Farmers veteran Neil Heather, from Bay of Plenty, North Canterbury Meat & Fibre chairman Dan Hodgen, and Manawatu-Wanganui Federated Farmers stalwart Chris Wall, whose area also took out the Membership Growth Award.