9 www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Able 2016 Hello and welcome to the final programme in our 2016 series of Rural Delivery. This year we've been privileged to spend time with people around the country who are responding to pests and diseases that challenge our primary sectors. We've spent time too with people who exemplify best practice in their farming operations, as well as those who are adding value to our primary assets ` the land and water and all that grows there. And today is no exception. This week we find out about efforts at Victoria University to control the highly invasive Argentine ant, a major concern for horticulturalists and beekeepers. We meet Thomas Chatfield, an ex-physiotherapist who was named the 2016 Bay of Plenty Dairy Farm Manager of the Year. And we discover how the value of NZ paua is being boosted by work at Scion, where a bioplastic is being developed using paua shell. The Argentine ant has been described by Professor Phil Lester as the Genghis Khan of the ant world. It's a well-adapted and highly invasive pest that's threatening our honey and horticulture industries. But Professor Lester and other Victoria University researchers have identified a novel virus that may be the key to a biocontrol. Argentine ants were first found in NZ in 1990, so a couple of decades ago now. They were found in Auckland, in Mt Smart Stadium by an entomologist who was there in part of a band. Since then they've moved, really, throughout the country, down as far as Christchurch ` so that's the lowest populations ` and right through Northland, uh, all the way in between. So a long way. They're moved primarily by human dispersal, so people moving them around. These ants will get in a pot plant or they'll get in your household goods. People will move ` they'll get in a truck. They've even been seen in small planes. And they'll move around the country that way. NZers are pretty lucky in the grand scheme of things. We don't have a lot of ant problems. If you talk to a lot of people in North America with fire ants or, uh, in Europe with some of the ants over there, ants can be a major nuisance around the house and for horticultural industry. It's a question, really, of numbers. If you get one or two ants, it's not a big deal. If you get a gazillion ants, it's a big problem. Beekeepers in Northland, for example, are now experiencing exactly that. They're having a lot of Argentine ants raid beehives, um, make some sites in Northland untenable for bees. They can't rear bees there any more. The ants are doing several things to bee colonies. They will certainly raid them. The ants will come in, and at times they seem to go after the honey, but a lot of the time, they seem to attack the brood, the young larvae and pupae within the hives. They'll kill them and eat them, basically. So we're not talking one or two ants; we're talking millions and millions of ants raiding these beehives, killing off the larvae, raiding the honey, making the bees just not work. We know now that these ants carry several different viruses. Um, one of those viruses is deformed wing virus. Now, the principal reservoir or spreader of deformed wing virus in honeybees in NZ is varroa, so varroa is a big problem. But here we've found Argentine ants are yet another reservoir and another spreader of this virus within the country. AIR HISSES SOFTLY As the name suggests, they're Argentine ants, they're initially from South America. They went into North America then to Europe then to, likely, Australia, and from Australia into NZ, into Mt Smart Stadium. It seems like that initial incursion was likely to be around a single nest ` maybe with 16 individual queens and many workers ` that, since then, moved on throughout the country. The Argentine ant has been referred to as the Genghis Khan of the ant world. It's a really really good invasive species. Wherever it goes, it tends to wipe out the native species. It decimates populations. And we've seen that in NZ too. So it's come into the country; where it's invaded, where it's got high densities, it really knocks back our native and other introduced ant populations. We've found some indications that the Argentine ants are host to multiple pathogens, multiple viruses in these situations. The hopeful effect is a biological control agent that is effective and very specific to Argentine ants. That's what we're really after here in the long run. We have seen populations of Argentine ants throughout the country periodically crash. We're unsure of why they crash. It could be related to food; it could be related to pathogens. We're thinking that it's likely to be related to pathogens, and this virus is potentially one of those. Our goal, in the end, is to be able to manipulate that pathogen in order to promote population crashes of these Argentine ants. What we're doing is infecting these Argentine ants with virus that we have extracted from ants that we know are infected by this virus. And what we want to see is if these ant colonies will succumb to the virus. We collect ants from different populations and different parts of the country so that we have replication; so that we know if ants in more than one area are affected by the way we treat them, then it's a real result. My research on Argentine ants is to try to find out more about the virus that we've already discovered, the LHUV-1 virus, and also to try and characterise other viruses in the Argentine ant. Currently, we have very few invasive ants that have biological controls. The red imported fire ant has a few viruses and phorid fly as a control, but we don't have any biological controls for Argentine ants. So that means we are resorting to pesticides, and they obviously have environmental effects. The virus that Phil's group discovered, we're calling it the LHUV-1 virus, and that's because it's the first virus in the Linepithema humile, which is the Argentine ant's scientific name. We don't really yet know much about it. We do know that a lot of ants are infected by it, but we don't know if it actually has effects on the population dynamics of the ant. The other hypothesis is that if the ants are infected by a virus or disease, then they're not as competitive. Um, so the native species could dominate in that situation. The first step in isolating viruses from Argentine ants ` or from any ant ` is to extra RNA, total RNA, from the ant, and that will include RNA that belongs to the ant but also RNA that belongs to any endogenous organisms like bacteria and viruses. And we use new sequencing technologies to sequence that RNA. And from there, that gives us a little clue as to what type of organisms are in the Argentine ant. Once we've gotten a clue of what the virus might be is to detect whether that potential virus is in different populations. And when we find it, we will extract RNA from those ants, and that will include the viruses. And we use those to infect healthy ants and see what the effects are. Once we've isolated a virus and we've seen whether it will affect the target species, we also need to see if it will affect non-target organisms. And in this case, we certainly don't want to introduce a virus as a biological control that might affect honeybees. So we'll be doing some testing to make sure that this virus is specific before we go further. When we return, we meet Thomas Chatfield, a physiotherapist who switched careers to become an award-winning dairy farm manager. 9 Welcome back. Thomas Chatfield was awarded the 2016 Bay of Plenty Dairy Farm Manager of the Year and went on to win the national title. Thomas has been in the dairy industry for four years. He's one of a growing number in the industry who are not from a farming background but who have studied and worked in other careers before switching to farming. Originally, I trained as a physiotherapist. I graduated from Otago Uni in 2007. I worked in Tauranga Hospital for a couple of years as a physio and then travelled to London. Worked there as a physio. And it was when I got home to NZ from the UK that I was staying on a farm with a friend, and I was doing a little bit of physio work and then on the weekends found myself in the cowshed. Then one thing led to another, and I was offered a full-time job on a dairy farm. And I couldn't see a reason not to take it. I thought I'd only get that opportunity to do something like that once. My first year here was the second season we had the barn behind me. It's a really useful tool in terms of managing our pasture and protecting our pasture. We winter everything on, so we use that barn pretty much flat out through winter just to keep the cows from damaging our paddocks. We can get summer-dry, so we have got half of the farm irrigated. That can certainly dry right out ` the other side of the road where we are irrigated. Apart from that, it's a pretty nice spot to farm. We get reasonably consistent rainfall most of the time. But with the irrigation, we can manage the deficits. Pretty warm, but pretty mild winters as well. That allows us to winter on. We do grow a bit of grass through winter. We also do a little bit of winter milk just with some of our late calvers and empty cows. It's a Jersey farm. I think part of the Jersey is legacy of Bruce's father ` it was a Jersey farm when Bruce took over. We do find that they fit quite well in the system here, you know. We're able to run a slightly higher stocking rate than we would if we had Friesian, so that allows us to have more cows to make more milk. COW MOOS When I first started, I spent most of my evenings flicking through the trade rags, magazines, the newspapers. I was pretty fortunate that some of the people that I had contact with in my early days ` which was not that long ago ` were really smart, skilled farmers. Uh, and then from there, I also` I wanted to have a real good foundation to what I was learning and base it in a bit of fact, so I did do a Primary ITO course, their Level 4 dairy farming course. And I did that in my first year, and that kinda just set the ground rules for everything else and it gave me some perspective on everything. Since then, I've moved on. I've done the production management Level 5, which just drilled a bit deeper into analysing the numbers and making sure things stacked up. But all the way along the way, any chance I could learn something, be it Fieldays, any emails that you were getting from the likes of Dairy NZ or the local discussion groups, all of those kinds of things, just attending as much as I could. It's as tough as you want to make it. You can farm really simply and be effective, but you can also get right down into the nitty gritty of things and make it as complicated as you want to. And you will see benefits from that as well. I think my people management has certainly come from physiotherapy. A big part of physiotherapy is getting people to do something that they don't necessarily want to do. So managing how` managing their expectations so they get the outcome they want. And that's transferred really well into farming, or into managing people on the farm. And I think the fact that, uh, we're in our third season now here on Dreamfields with the same team, um, kind of speaks to that. My first year managing here, there are certainly a couple of times when I was on the phone to the guy that was running the farm the year before me and saying, 'This is what's happening. 'What do we need to do?' Or, you know, 'Am I right? Am I on the right path?' But there's plenty of people and there's so much support in dairy farming. I've got Bruce, the farm owner, Chris, who's the previous manager, but also just, you know, your neighbour, your friends. You're not in competition with these people; you're working towards the, kind of, greater good. And so the information is really easy to get hold of. It's just knowing where to look. A really interesting thing was at the Dairy Industry Awards there was a good, probably, half dozen of us at least that weren't from a farming background. And I think that, yeah, it takes the blinkers off. You're able to look at the whole picture and you're not in tunnel vision, you're not doing something just because that's the way it's always been done. You're always kind of challenging the norm and thinking about different ways to do things or is the way that you are doing it the best way? And so, yeah, I think, certainly, coming from the outside I'm not stuck in the, 'This is how Dad did it and this is how Grandad did it, so this is how I'm gonna do it.' In my first season I entered Dairy Trainee and won that in the Bay of Plenty and then went on to Wellington and came runner-up in the finals. And so I entered that first year` I wanted to kind of get a yardstick of where I was standing along the ladder. I thought I was picking up dairy farming pretty well, but I wanted to mark and measure myself against someone else. And then once I was in the competition, I knew how it worked. I had such a great time in Wellington, as soon as I was eligible to enter for Farm Manager and I didn't have anything else on during the year, I sorta thought, 'Why not? Let's have a go.' And then one thing's led to another. There is a lot of talk about how there are less share-milking jobs and it is getting harder to own your own farm, but I think there is always gonna be a need for some form of share milker or equity partnership, so long term, that is the plan. It is a tough time in the dairy industry, and I certainly know that from myself, looking for my next job, uh, to go self-employed is the plan. Uh, people tend to just be sitting tight at the moment, so there are fewer jobs out there. I've definitely noticed the turndown in that. Um, and... But that, to me, just makes it all the more important to enter things like the dairy awards. You get that mark next to your name, and that's gonna make you stand out when you do apply. Um, and the fact that I've won, that's certainly gonna help open a few doors that might not have been there beforehand. So I'm still fairly positive that, while we are in a bit of a lull at the moment, you know, my farm owner has been around long enough to see the highs and the lows and know that hopefully, you know, things will be on the up soon, and that's when, hopefully, I'll be able to step up. When we return, we look at the potential for bioplastics integrating paua shell. 9 Hello again. Scientists at Crown Research Institute Scion are working with aquaculture farm Moana NZ to produce a 3D-printed bioplastic containing paua shell. The new technology is making it possible to add value to what was largely a biomass waste stream. The idea here is to generate value to a bio-based resource, like, in this case, paua shells. Paua shells is actually exported or given to offshore processers. And we've got the opportunity to make much more out of it in NZ. It was really through a number of conversations and, um, exploratory discussions we have with a number of representatives of primary sectors. So we're always looking at opportunities to add value to biomass side streams. And, yeah, this is one opportunity to potentially broaden out for more than just paua but also other seashells, obviously. It's part of the bigger push for bioeconomy, or the utilisation of biomass for more than just food, and feed, really, paua-based products ` fewer chemicals. We're happy to look into broader primary sector side streams and potentially make value-added products out of it. For us it is a part of the whole sustainability. So Scion invests a lot of effort into the broader bioeconomy, which is obviously in good part for keeping NZ prosperous and innovative. So this is a part of it; of the broader manufacturing and bioproducts strategy. In Europe the bioeconomy now employs about 22 million people. And interestingly, they are quite often employed in regional or rural areas, coastal areas, so it's small and medium enterprises, so actually perfect for NZ. And it's also perfect to really combine the economic growth but still preserving the environment and the natural resources. We've now proven the concept. We've shown, yes, we can incorporate it into filaments, into bioplastics. And the next step is to reach out, to understand with other parts of the value chain can we use other feedstock? Are compounders or producers interested in utilising it? But then also working on products and further applications. We see the value can be in two areas. One is obviously the shell, in itself, has interesting mechanical properties. But much more we are interested in capturing that beauty and the iridescence that paua has and how we can make that and get this into the biowaste filaments. International consumers and more and more consumers, especially the millennium generation, is really picking up on the sustainability and the social aspects of products. And there is a number of studies out there that brands and products that get this story right and the credentials right have double the amount of sales. Also, with packaging, it is important to show and highlight these credentials. My role here is 3D printing expert. So I'm working on the formulation that contains paua shells and then make sure that they are appropriate for 3D printing. Here I have a biocomposite that contains paua shells. We want something which is biodegradable, and we are trying to get away from petroleum-based resources. So we want to make some plastic items which are biosourced. And the paua shell is also an amazing biocomposite that we want to integrate into our filament. What we are measuring are the mechanical properties of filaments, so we make a wide range of filaments and then we test them, we do the mechanical analysis. Ad then we are trying to see if it has any influence, any improvements of other bioplastic on its own, and then also we want to improve the appearance, trying to make something which is really looking like a paua shell. I'm a chemist, so I'm more involved in the chemistry side of things. That means figuring out what the material we are using is made of. This gives valuable information on its reactivity, what it can be mixed with, what it can react with, what is allowed to do with this material and what we can do. Paua is mostly made out of calcium carbonate, and this calcium carbonate is in the shape of crystals in the shell, and these crystals' plates are arranged and stacked, um, and they are linked together by a biopolymer. And it is this configuration which gives the shell its incredible toughness but also its iridescence and its colours. We first start which a paua shell which is clean. We grind it, we sieve it; so we obtain a powder, homogeneous. Then we mix it with a bioplastic and we extrude them together to obtain a filament like this, which can be 3D printed directly. The paua on its own is a really amazing biocomposite. And then we try to integrate it as a toughener into a composite to improve the mechanical properties, but also we wanted to improve the appearance of our composites to give its striking beauty into our items. The paua shell has a multi-structure, and we're trying to understand at what level we need to integrate it into a composite to make sure that we get the best properties. We're hoping that within 18 months we will be able to give industry a value proposition. And at the moment we see that we are connecting some dots with the industries, and the interest is present, so now for us the next step is to improve our technology and make sure that we can demonstrate that to further partners that they can invest in our technology. For more information on these and other stories we've covered, you can visit our website. Get there via tvnz.co.nz. And while we're off air, you can still watch this and previous episodes you might have missed on TVNZ OnDemand. Use the keywords Rural Delivery. And on behalf of the Rural Delivery team, I'd like to wish you a safe, productive and healthy summer. And we look forward to bringing you more stories of primary sector achievement in 2017. Captions by Tracey Dawson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016