NZDFI’s first PhD success
Huimin Lin, who began her studies in November 2015, has become the first of the NZDFI scholarship students at UC to complete her PhD. Huimin spent most of the last 3 years working on an E. boistoana breeding trial in Marlborough, where she assessed family variation in insect susceptibility and impacts of defoliation. One of her trials highlighted the importance of the timing of defoliation, with later summer defoliation having a substantially greater impact on tree growth than spring defoliation. She also found significant variation in pest tolerance within a selection of 15 E. bosistoana families, with four southern provenance families showing greater resistance (i.e. less defoliation) to leaf rollers and miners, and greater tolerance (continued growth despite higher defoliation) to Paropsis beetles. Huimin also managed to squeeze in the first assessments of the impacts and species preferences of the recently arrived eucalypt variegated beetle (EVB).
The School of Forestry will build on the research Huimin has conducted and is currently advertising for 2 new PhD students to look at 1) Eucalypt variegated beetle (EVB) host preferences and biological control and 2) relating eucalypt pest tolerance durability to foliar chemistry.
Contact Dr Tara Murray for more information: tara.murray@canterbury.ac.nz.