NSW DPI’s Loretta Serafin is a research agronomist in summer grains, leading the DPI’s northern summer grains research program, out of Tamworth. Under a partnership with GRDC in building research capacity for the grains industry, she is working on a PhD in sorghum agronomy for low rainfall environments.

Image courtesy of FarmOnline

Loretta grew up in western Sydney and started her trek into agriculture via a bachelor of applied science in systems agriculture, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury.

Her 22-year career with NSW DPI began as a district agronomist in 1999 based in Moree, Gunnedah and Tamworth before she moved into the role as the NSW DPI leader in the northern farming systems team in 2013. She is a familiar face to growers, being a constant in the paddock through her trial work spanning from the Liverpool Plains to Mungindi and all paddocks in between. She is also a former member of the GRDC Northern Panel, ensuring growers levies were spent on research that had both impact and relevance for grain growers.

Why did you want to get involved in agriculture and research?

Loretta’s interest in agriculture, in particular plants, started at an early age with her mother often taking her to the local nursery to select and grow new plants.

“I really enjoyed the atmosphere; it is so quiet and calm amongst the plants! It suits my personality really, but I also like following the journey of plant growth and development. I still find being out of a field of plants to be one of the focusing experiences, especially in the spring and summer”.

Loretta enjoys the challenge of research, summed up in her following comment:

“I am a strong advocate for evidence-based practice change. I want to know that when we make a change it can be justified with strong, independent data”.

What attracted you to the GRDC / DPI capacity building position?

The capacity building position offered Loretta the opportunity to continue working in summer crops and the grains industry which she loves, as well as enabling her to undertake her PhD. This was important to Loretta, as it has enabled her to ‘bridge the gap’ between running field trials, delivering outcomes to growers and yet building and preserving a data set for the scientific domain in the future.

Loretta’s PhD is through the university of Queensland in ‘Improving the reliability and profitability of sorghum in north west NSW”. Inter-agency collaborations have been built with her supervisors including Dr Daniel Rodriguez, QAAFI, Dr Jeremy Whish CSIRO and Peter DeVoil, University of Queensland.

“I have spent many years working in northern NSW and I like to work in areas which are underserviced. I don’t need to be part of the “crowd”. There are very few people researching in summer grains, particularly, sorghum, corn and sunflowers, yet I think they are very important rotation crops for our systems”.

Why do you like working for DPI?

“I am fortunate to work in a small, but very motivated summer cropping team. I also have a great support network of researchers and technical staff within NSW DPI. I have always had a strong desire to be able to provide answers on key agronomy questions to growers and advisors in the grains industry, and DPI is one of the key providers in that space”.

What skills have you developed because of the project?

As part of Loretta’s PhD, she has been analysing data sets from her large field trial data set to determine the most reliable agronomic practices for producing sorghum in the marginal north west environments. A component of this is trying to use APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) to mimic the trial outcomes and then to be able to extrapolate the six seasons of field results over a greater range of climatic systems over 100 years.

How has this project set you up for future advancement in your career and research?

“As a mid- career scientist this capacity building project has allowed me to develop additional skills in data analysis and interrogation which I will be able to use to benefit the Australian grains industry in the future. The PhD has meant I have had to ask for help from people to learn new things and as a result I have built new collaborations which has been great”.

What are the main things you have learnt?

Loretta admits that she is very driven and focused in her work, liking to get things done and that undertaking a PhD sometimes seems like one step forward and three steps back, in order to eventually make progress.

“I need to be accepting of that - at times. This process has been challenging for me as I have needed to rely on people with other skills sets to mine and step totally out of my comfort zone in learning some of the computer programs and models”.

As a field-based agronomist, she has found this a big change from being able to see and touch your results in the paddock, to producing results from computer simulations and trusting the systems underpinning them.

How will your research help farmers and help facilitate practice change on a farm level?

Loretta’s research is designed to deliver very practical and adoptable outcomes to growers in marginal, summer crop environments. Her focus has been on managing soil water, nitrogen and agronomic practices in sorghum (plant population, row configuration and hybrid type).

“My research will hopefully allow growers to develop confidence to include sorghum as a reliable rotation crop on their farms”.  

What has your project delivered to industry?

“This project has allowed NSW DPI and GRDC to develop a stronger focus on summer crop agronomy research in northern NSW”.

What new projects or holes in current research have you identified?

Loretta acknowledges that there is still a gap in both knowledge and research in the more marginal environments. She has highlighted that there is a large lack of soil characterisation data for the western areas, especially for summer crops.

“There is a massive opportunity for sorghum production if we can get the package right”.

When not in the paddock, Loretta keeps herself occupied with her two small children and running a couple of small farms with her husband Michael on the outskirts of Tamworth.