1 July 2009 Greening Waipara Leader and Team Win Achievement Award

Lincoln University's Professor of Ecology Steve Wratten and his “Greening Waipara” team have won the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science's Significant Achievement Award for 2009.

The award, announced at the Institute's Awards Dinner at Lincoln University last night (Tues. 30 June), recognises significant contributions to the advancement of Canterbury agriculture/horticulture.

Professor Wratten's award was for his brainchild, the Greening Waipara project, described in the citation as an example of “bioprotection science in action”.

Members of the project team, led by Professor Wratten,  include deputy leader Dr Colin Meurk of  Landcare, Mariska Anderson, Annie Barnes, Mark Gillespie, Gianni Prencipe, Shona Sam and Jean Tonkins all of the Lincoln University-based Bio-Protection Research Centre, plus representatives of Hurunui District Council and the Japanese company Four Leaf (Japan) Co Ltd.

Funding sources include a component from a wider biodiversity and sustainable agriculture study being undertaken by Professor Wratten, supported by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.

The Greening Waipara project, which began in 2005, uses biodiversity to sustain vineyard productivity in the Waipara wine-growing area of North Canterbury, while simultaneously benefiting conservation, enhancing the marketability of Waipara wines and developing eco-tourism.

Also at the Institute's Awards Dinner, former Lincoln University Senior Lecturer in Plant Science Dick Lucas received the AGMARDT Technology Award. The citation referred to his “tireless work at field days, on monitor farms, at conferences and through his undergraduate and postgraduate teaching promoting pasture legumes suitable for droughty, low phosphate acidic soils throughout New Zealand”.