My experience brought me in many different places. It started in coastal foredunes working on the pathology complex of marram grass (topic of my PhD), taking a deep dive in the ecology of coastal grasses, teaching microbiology and ecology to being a consultant for diagnostics. This flowed naturally into a longer assignment to create a start clean, stay clean concept for ornamentals. Trouble shooting, training staff, defining best practices and adopting a quality management approach were keywords. Besides ornamentals I have been involved in vegetables and soft fruit. My work has been involved in root cause analysis when things go wrong to creating practical best practices to avoid repetition of events.
Quality management systems should not only be compliant to the rules of the certification, but should be workable, simple and to the point.
Lately, I got interested in the world of biostimulants, especially the bacterial population belonging to the Bacillus group. The more I read about the relation between the ecology of soil organisms and the genetic expression it induced in plants, the more intrigued I become. Tells that we know already a lot, but there is still a lot of room for further research, especially for practical and predictable applications.
As educated nematologist and phytopathologist, I have a wealth of experience in virology, entomology, plant physiology and in a vast number of different crops and crop groups. Moverover, my never ending curiosity on biology of plants in their environment combined with a passion for education, is contagious.