Deborah Wright

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT DEBORAH WRIGHT

My journey toward plant pathology started with a career change from conservation: I studied an undergraduate degree in Horticulture at Askham Bryan College. After receiving a 2:1 result I was offered a teaching role at the college and worked as a lecturer in Glasshouse Propagation, teaching students from NVQ to Foundation Degree level. After two years I decided to return to studying with a Master’s in Plant Pathology at Harper Adams University. My final project at Harper Adams was researching the effect of liquid silicon spray on Botrytis cinerea lesion growth. Results were inconclusive, but it was an exciting prospect that this low-impact substance could activate plant defence systems to improve plant health and growth. I would really like to After graduation, I moved into employment and became a valued member of the trials team at Bayer CropScience, where I worked as an Assistant Trials Agronomist alongside some of the best regional agronomists in the UK. Over two seasons I set up, sprayed, assessed and helped harvest a variety of crops to determine the efficacy of plant protection products, often working independently without supervision. Since September 2019 I have been working as a Fieldwork Experiment Technician at Rothamsted Research. I am loving my role. My work is varied and interesting. No one day is the same. I can be out taking soil samples one day, assessing fields of wheat for pests and diseases the next, or out mapping black grass across the country. It is almost like this role was created just for me, as it suits my skill set down to a tee.