Case studies : NIAB research assistant: Gemma

On a day-to-day basis she undertakes tasks such as sowing and potting up plants and crossing wheat. She also helps to harvest grains and cartridge seeds for drilling.

Gemma studied applied biology at university as she is fascinated by life science, especially plants, which she feels are very important to our lives. In the first year, her degree covered all areas of biology including plants, humans, animal behaviour, microbiology, biochemistry and biotechnology as well as other subjects. This gave her more time to choose what area of biology she wanted to specialise in. In the following years she went into environmental and plant sciences. This was generally helpful, but not specific to plant breeding or plant genetics. She did learn basic laboratory practice and got used to the way a laboratory is set up and used, along with basic techniques such as pipetting using a Gilson pipette.

Her Masters was more taxonomy and plant botany based, although it did cover genetics and plant anatomy, which has been useful in the job. It also gave her an understanding of plant families and their history and geography.

From the outset of her degree she had always been keen to pursue a career in active research and undertook a year’s industrial placement at Syngenta. During her time there she came across names of companies also doing agricultural research, such as NIAB. When it came to looking for a job, she searched the websites of the various companies she had heard mentioned, to see if they had any vacancies. At the time, NIAB had three openings in the research department. One of these in particular caught her eye and so she printed off the application form and sent it in. They offered her an interview and three days after attending she was offered a four-year contract at NIAB.

She advises anyone interested in becoming a plant breeder/geneticist that they need to have a science background, mainly in biology and preferably in plant science. In research, it is helpful to have some practical experience either working with plants or working on DNA in a laboratory, although she has had a lot of on-the-job training especially in the laboratory. NIAB was looking for someone to work outside and in the glasshouses, so her industrial placement at Syngenta helped as she worked a great deal in this kind of setting during her time there. It also meant that she had some experience in a working environment which many other people straight out of university lack.

On a day-to-day basis she undertakes tasks such as sowing and potting up plants and crossing wheat. She also helps to harvest grains and cartridge seeds for drilling. In the lab she extracts DNA from live material, runs PCRs and does gel electrophoresis. Initially she was very nervous about working in a laboratory but during the ten months she has worked at NIAB, her confidence has increased and she is able to just get on with the tasks in hand.

She loves the fact that she is constantly learning new skills at NIAB. She has also had lots of different experiences: she went to Germany for a conference, she has been on BBC radio Cambridge and she has presented posters at various open days and events. She enjoys the fact that her job has lots of variation: one week she will be working in the lab, the next she will be out in the field or in the glasshouse doing a variety of jobs. She gets to do quite a bit of physical work in her job which keeps her fit and healthy and she likes watching the plants grow and working outside in the fresh air in the fields around NIAB. As with any job, there are times when she undertakes a lot of repetitive work, which can get a bit boring, but other than that she loves her work and never clock watches because she enjoys what she does.

She especially likes the idea of being a part of research that might one day help our farmers and plant breeders in some way. In the future, she would like to be employed as a plant breeder in agricultural crops. In her current role at NIAB, she works with wheat, but she would also like to move into different plants, including novel crops. She also deals mainly with genes involved in flowering time, but would also like to be involved with other genes such as those for disease resistance and chemical production.