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Profiting from Pests

Dr Philippa Gerard, an environmental scientist at the Ruakura Agricultural Centre, has won a national award to assist her research into wool carpet pests.

The 1992 Zonta Science Award was competed for by 64 of New Zealand's top women scientists. Gerard's win brings her a round-the-world air ticket from British Airways and a cash prize of $5000 raised by the Wellington Zonta Club, who established the biennial award in 1990.

Gerard is researching a way of protecting wool carpets from harmful pests without using methods that harm the environment. A successful outcome would boost one of New Zealand's most valuable exports. The current method of proofing carpets against insects produces wastes that, while safe to humans, are poisonous to water organisms. It has been banned in Europe, so the hunt is on to find a treatment that is environmentally friendly.

Gerard is attacking the problem from three directions: understanding the pest biology; investigating the potential of natural products, including native plants; and experimenting with putting substances which resist insects into the carpet backing.

She is one of the few scientists in the world researching this problem, and sees the study-travel part of the award as invaluable.

"It is such a small field that we have no conferences or scientific publications dedicated to this field at all. This really handicaps the exchange of information," she says.

Gerard hopes to study for a month with scientists at Britain's International Wool Secretariat centre for wool research. She will also visit another British lab responsible for monitoring pesticide residues, and a US lab that evaluates treatments to protect wool and furs from insect damage.

Gerard points out that her research could also work for other pests such as dust mites. This could have implications for people suffering from allergies or asthma, or in preventing flea infestations from household pets. Her plant extract work, a sideline in the carpet pest research, could result in finding effective pesticides which are environmentally friendly too.

Educated at St Margaret's School, Christchurch, Gerard achieved first class honours in horticultural science at Lincoln College and later did a PhD at Waikato University.

Gerard is highly appreciative of her work environment at Ruakura, which has been flexible while her children are growing up -- she has been able to work part-time for the last few years. But she feels uneasy at the way science funding is going in New Zealand at the moment.

"Much of the sort of work women enjoy doing and are good at --  long term projects which are not high-tech -- do not attract the funding," she says.