24 July 1992 Lincoln Professor at International Symposium in U.K.

Speakers at the 3rd International Symposium on Adjuvants, being held at Britain's Cambridge University over 3-7 August, include Lincoln University's Head of Plant Science, Professor Roger Field.

Adjuvants are substances added to agrichemical sprays to assist the action and improve the efficiency of the chemical being used. They may help in a variety of ways such as boosting penetration and absorption, aiding weather resistance, increasing "stickability", ensuring evenness of spread etc.

Lincoln has had a number of postgraduate students working in this general field under Professor Field. In fact the first person to complete a degree after Lincoln became a university in 1990 carried out research in this area. Rosalind Buick's thesis on the mode of action of organosilicone surfactants in enhancing herbicide activity earned her a doctorate, and from Lincoln she went on to a Research Associate's position at Virginia Polytechnic and State University in America.

The paper Professor Field is presenting at the Cambridge international symposium brings together Dr Buick's work and that of two other Lincoln University scientists, environmental physicist Dr Graeme Buchan and biological modeller Dr Bruce Robson. It is entitled "The role of surface tension of spreading droplets in leaf absorption of Triclopyr in the presence of an organosilicone surfactant".

Triclopyr is a selective herbicide used in the control of gorse, blackberry, lupin, broom and other brush weeds. The Lincoln study was carried out in relation to gorse.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand