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Intro: This is a GRDC podcast.

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Sally Maguire: Hello, I'm Sally Maguire. A passion for pulses, and in particular, a love of lentils have inspired the career of research scientist Dr Audrey Delahunty. Growers are already benefiting from Dr Delahunty’s research into genetic solutions for heat tolerance in lentils, and now she's extending into frost quality technology and other pulses. Meantime, Dr Delahunty is also the recipient of GRDC's Emerging Leader Award in the South. Let's start off with when you attend dinner parties, dinner party conversation, how do you describe the work that you do?

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Audrey Delahunty: Actually, it's a funny one. I find it difficult at a dinner party with people who aren't in this field to explain, and how I explain it is I start to talk about what a pulse is from a food context, and then talk about how I work to try and improve, how they grow and how they are suited to particular environments, and then link that back to, you know, weather events like rainfall, heat or frost and usually go from there.

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Sally Maguire: Tell me a bit about your career journey. How did you end up in agriculture in the first place?

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Audrey Delahunty: When I went to university, I studied science and had quite a keen interest in geochemistry and environmental science. So, I did my honours in that, and during that time I had an increasing interest towards more outdoor research or job. And after my university was finished, I was offered a position as a casual at the Horsham Smart Farm, working in virus and the relationship between climate change and what might happen in wheat. So, I started in that, and I was just absolutely captivated. And then from there, I started to get more of an understanding of the agricultural industry and sort of opportunities and moved into a PhD. Because I had that background in science, I was able to apply a lot of my knowledge and principles from that into that sort of next step. And then during my PhD, learnt a lot of the sort of fundamentals, obviously support through my supervisors. And I was based at Horsham so, connecting with industry, you know, really getting an understanding of the broader industry and context, I was working as well. And then from there it sort of just developed through different opportunities and following sort of areas that I'm really enthusiastic in, which I've been very, very fortunate to do currently.

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Sally Maguire: How would you describe your main areas of interest? You mentioned pulses?

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Audrey Delahunty: When I started in my career as a PhD student, pulses were really a big focus. So, I started with that, and I worked very closely, and still do, with do people who are very familiar with that area. So, from there, I have always sort of focused on pulses, so that is certainly key interest, I really find them an incredible crop, particularly how they grow their indeterminacy and how they adapted to different regions. So, as I've got more experience, I've learnt more about the different pulse crops. But that's certainly a key area of interest. In addition to that, abiotic stresses. So that's something I've looked at and also find incredibly interesting, but it's that response on the plant and how we can improve our adaptation of our crops as well, which is something I'm really interested in. And more recently moving into also understanding the effects of grain quality. So, thinking about it from a consumer perspective as well.

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Sally Maguire: What does a typical day in the office look like for you?

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Audrey Delahunty: A typical day, I'm not sure I have a typical day. It depends on the time of year and what's going on, so, at times I'm really office based, so that might be going through data, trying to understand what's happening from what we're measuring and other times, I'm doing a lot of fieldwork so, sometimes applying, for example, heat to lentils, using heat chambers, or a lot of other activities around meetings and things, collaborating with certain parties to plan and then execute, That is a really big part, particularly at this time of year. February, March. A normal day would certainly include a lot of engagement around that.

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Sally Maguire: I understand that you do do fairly regular speaking engagements and also crop walks across the Wimmera and the Mallee. So, what do you enjoy about that stuff?

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Audrey Delahunty: I do do a few, which I'm very lucky to do. I really enjoy getting feedback from growers and agronomists. So, we do a lot of research, and you are constantly thinking about, you know, your design and what's happening, but to actually get that interaction and see how that may impact on a farming system and also have feedback, so you might be able to change what you're doing so it's more applicable. I really, really like that, so I guess that connection and conversation is something that I really love. And that's something you certainly get from those activities.

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Sally Maguire: Any standout moments in your research area recently?

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Audrey Delahunty: I work in my role in lots of different areas of research. So, some of the things that I do, the news isn't necessarily on farm. It might be, you know, a pre breeding activity, so, trying to enhance a particular trait within a plant. And then, from there I also work in really applied components of the industry as well, for example, the pulse agronomy program. So, with that, I think that there's a huge impact with growers where we're able to sort of, communicate things that you can provide an example of, and you've got trial plots that support that, and then people can walk away and apply that on farm, which I think is a really impactful thing. Being able to see the effect of a treatment, for example, that might be around not last year, but in a wet year, certain fungicide and variety selections, and how that may enhance and change your entire higher infection rate within the crop.

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Sally Maguire: You've had the opportunity to work on some GRDC investments in your career so far, just give me an idea of where you have worked with GRDC.

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Audrey Delahunty: I certainly have been very lucky to work on a few GRDC projects. As I said before, most of the research I've worked in has been pulse related. So, the first GRDC investment I worked on was called the Regional Research Agronomist Program, and that was part of a bilateral with Agriculture Victoria and GRDC. And that was a really incredible opportunity to start in the industry, so it was working as a research agronomist, we had graduates who worked with grower groups with us and also with commercial agronomists. So that's where I started, and we were able to do some really applied research in the form of validation as that. Then moving into, I worked in alternative legumes and also looking at changes across a landscape in quality of pulse crops.And more recently, I've really moved into sort of more plant physiology as part of the National Pulse Agronomy Program, which is led by CSIRO, as well as capitalising on pulse protein. And, as I said before, little heat projects. So that is a large national project which is more around that pre breeding, so trying to improve the adaptation of lentil to a really high temperature, and as well as the Pulse Agronomy Programme. So, I'm quite diverse and across sort of a range of different projects. And that changed and transformed over time in what I've focused on.

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Sally Maguire: In the field that you're working in at the moment, or maybe even on a larger, more holistic scale, what do you see as the key challenges that are being faced by growers at the moment?

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Audrey Delahunty: I think there are a number of challenges, obviously, but one that probably stands out for me would be the complexity in making decisions. I think there's so many factors that go into how to do things on farm and what that could look like. And as farms get bigger and bigger, we've got a lot of information, but how does a grower pick what's best for them? Being aware that, with decisions there's risk. I think that would be really, really quite difficult. So, I guess it comes down to the complexity, and how that fits within your system, that I would find really, really challenging. So, whether that's around markets or, you know, herbicide management, whatever it might be, there's just so many different options, and working it out would be really difficult.

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Sally Maguire: Where to next for you and your career and your research?

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Audrey Delahunty: I think for the time being, I've been very lucky, probably over the last six to 12 months, to have some opportunities in more of a leadership capacity. So, for now, I'm really excited to continue to develop these skills from sort of a project management perspective, but also, in how I interact and develop networks with our industry. So, ensuring that things are effectively done and communicated to industry. So that's something I'm really keen to focus on for the next sort of little while.The other thing too, is moving into more of a farming systems area as well. So, with agronomy, thinking about developing some more of those principles too.

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Sally Maguire: Well, congratulations on your Emerging Leader Award, what does award recognition like this mean to you?

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Audrey Delahunty: It's incredible. I'm very grateful for the recognition and it's pretty overwhelming to have been, I guess firstly even nominated and then to be the recipient is so wonderful. It just really indicates that I'm moving in the right direction with regards to delivering things to industry. It's wonderful and very grateful.

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Sally Maguire: Is there anything you can think of that you'd like growers out there to know about all this behind-the-scenes kind of research and, you know, very fine, detailed work that goes on?

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Audrey Delahunty: I think growers are very, very knowledgeable in that area. One thing for me, and I suppose it goes back to that dinner party conversation, is with research and the different sort of points of delivery for that. There's so many, which I think is incredible, but also makes it really complex. For example, I outlined before some of the projects I'm involved in and they're all very beneficial to our industry, but some of them are long term goal and some of them are short term. So, thinking about from a farming perspective, what some of those long-term and short-term goals are, is always something that's really interesting from a grower perspective, because it's something that we certainly are picking up on across what I'm working on.

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Sally Maguire: That was Dr Audrey Delahunty, recipient of this year's Emerging Leader Award for the South. More information on this topic can be found in the description box below or online at grdc.com.au. I'm Sally Maguire. This has been a podcast. Thanks for listening.