20 November 1984 Dr Ani Arope visits Lincoln College

Visiting Lincoln College is Dr Ani Arope, Director of the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia, who was a student here in the 1960s.

Dr Ani Arope, an agronomist, is in New Zealand on a private visit, with his wife Saenah, two teenage daughters Sakinah and Salina, and a son, Ismail.

He is visiting three post-graduate students at the college, Othman Hashim and Zainab Hamzah who are husband and wife, and Ahmad Faiz, who are all working on doctorates.

All three work for the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia.

Othman is a plant scientist and Faiz a weed research scientist at the R.R.I.M. experimental station at Sungei Buloh, about 20 km from Kuala Lumpur.

Zainab is a soil scientist in the R.R.I.M. laboratories in Kuala Lumpur.

Dr Ani Arope,who has been director of R.R.I.M. for about 14 years, will also be getting reacquainted with college staff he knew as a student.

He will spend about four days at the college before touring New Zealand on a holiday trip.

He and his wife and family will be in New Zealand until early next month, when he flies out to Tokyo.

Dr Ani Arope is remembered by some college staff as "being a bit of a Kiwi" while he was here.

At the Rubber Research Institute, Dr Ani Arope is no desk-bound bureaucrat.

He has a reputation for getting out in a four-wheel drive into the plantations at the start of the working day.

One of his interests is a small-holders' project, in which those on small plantations are encouraged to diversify even to running, sheep, goats and chickens among the rubber trees – and to get the best out of their land by better fertilisation and other methods ends .

Further information from Othman Hashim on 252194, or through the secretary of the Plant Science Department, Lincoln College.