Emeritus Distinguished Professor Dame Alison Stewart has been elected as a Royal Society Ngā Ahurei a Te Apārangi Fellow for her lifetime commitment to the control of plant diseases using the beneficial fungus Trichoderma.
Twenty-one new Ngā Ahurei Fellows have been elected to the Academy of the Society.
The fellowship recognises researchers, scholars and innovators throughout New Zealand who have achieved excellence in their various disciplines across science, technology and the humanities.
Dame Alison is an internationally recognised plant pathologist and an expert in the control of plant diseases using beneficial micro-organisms.
In 1998, she became the first woman to be promoted to Professor at Lincoln University.
Early in her career, she developed effective control strategies for economically important onion diseases. Concerned about the heavy use of agrichemicals in New Zealand, she focused her research on developing biological solutions, creating a unique collection of fungal strains that enabled rapid and effective bioactivity screening, leading to the development of several Trichoderma-based biofungicides.
Her research has underpinned the commercialisation of six biobased products in New Zealand and the United States of America.
Among the other new fellows, Cecile de Klein was elected for generating specific knowledge on New Zealand’s agricultural greenhouse gases for better environmental management.
Dr de Klein FNZSSS is a leading soil and environmental scientist whose work has advanced understanding of nitrogen cycling and nitrous-oxide emissions in pastoral agricultural systems. Her research has revealed animal, soil, and plant solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from grazed livestock systems under New Zealand’s unique conditions.
She has developed accurate emission factors for agricultural greenhouse gases, specific to New Zealand. This research replaced generic global estimates with field-validated measurements, leading to significant revision of the country’s nitrous-oxide inventory. These improved metrics strengthen the scientific basis for New Zealand’s national greenhouse-gas reporting and informed policy decisions, ensuring that climate targets and regulatory frameworks reflect real agricultural conditions.
The new Fellows will be formally inducted at an event in Wellington on 30 April.
Sources: Royal Society of New Zealand and Lincoln University
