Case studies : Assistant barley breeder: Caroline

In her present role, Caroline prepares, drills and harvests early generation barley populations, which includes pulling plants by hand and driving a small plot combine.

Caroline had been working at her company in her Easter and summer holidays since she was 17 to earn some extra money for university. She made a good impression and was offered a job in the barley team as soon as she graduated.

Her degree in conservation biology was extremely relevant in securing her position, particularly the genetics side, as there is quite a lot of genetics involved when breeding for greater yields and disease resistances. She learned useful laboratory skills and techniques that enable her, to a limited extent, to understand molecular marker technology which is becoming an ever more important part of plant breeding. The data collection and statistical analysis undertaken in her degree have also been useful too.

Caroline’s role has developed over the three years she has been working full time. She was initially a technical assistant, learning how the breeding programme works, taking instructions and learning new skills just as when she was working as a student in the holidays. She is now managing her own time and organising the majority of the quality testing work that goes on in the winter months and she is responsible for the 12 or so students employed in the summer. Learning about the breeding programme and learning new skills is still an ongoing process.

In her present role, Caroline prepares, drills and harvests early generation barley populations, which includes pulling plants by hand and driving a small plot combine. She scores early generation plots for disease and phenotypic traits and prepares and helps with the scoring of disease nurseries for the pathology department. She also trains and supervises students in the harvest period. In addition, her work involves scheduling and carrying out quality testing, which includes grain grading, grain nitrogen testing, micro malting and malt analysis, and she sows and prepares samples to be molecular marker tested. She is also involved with the preparation, drilling and harvesting of trials, and where necessary the initial crossing of barley plants.

She enjoys the variety of tasks in the day to day and season to season workings of the job and also enjoys learning new skills needed to progress further. She loves working outdoors, which is a big part of this job and she says that being involved in breeding successful varieties of barley and tasting the beer made from them is quite a good perk too!

The less enjoyable aspect of the job is that, although there is a wide variety of tasks, each usually has to be done thousands of times and so things can get a bit monotonous and boring at times. Working outside sometimes has its downside too, as you can get very cold drilling spring barley when it is frosty or snowing, and combining in hot sun with the engine blowing hot air and dust all over you is very uncomfortable.

Caroline would advise anyone wanting to become a plant breeder that some work experience or holiday work in this type of job is helpful, along with a reasonably good knowledge of agriculture. More importantly, she thinks people intending to pursue this career should take a relevant agriculturally-associated qualification to include some kind of biological science and laboratory experience. A good tip for getting on in this role would be a willingness to work very hard, especially during harvest in the summer months. Being ready to turn your hand to lots of different skills and to work in conditions which may not always be very comfortable is looked upon very favourably, as getting cold, wet, dirty, hot and sweaty is very much part of getting on in this job!

In the future, Caroline would like to progress so that she knows the breeding programme inside out and she would like to be involved with the decision-making process of choosing the next big variety. She would like to become so knowledgeable about barley that she could be in charge of the barley programme at her company and put her own stamp on the profession by breeding the ultimate perfectly environmentally friendly variety.