Black Isle-raised former Tarradale Primary and Dingwall Academy pupil is hailed Woman of Influence at New Zealand awards
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A ROSS-SHIRE soil scientist’s ground-breaking work has seen her land a Women of Influence accolade on the other side of the world.
Former Tarradale Primary and Dingwall Academy pupil Dr Trish Fraser has been at the forefront of a major change in the once male-dominated field in which she excels.
Her success with a Women of Influence award in New Zealand is a natural progression for the girl who grew up on a farm in Ross-shire and went on to study plant and soil sciences at university.
Dr Fraser manages a team of seven at Plant and Food Research in Lincoln, New Zealand, where she has worked for almost three decades.
She said she enjoyed working with farmers and growers and learning about the natural environment. She added: “It’s new stuff every day – you never get bored because any questions you answer open up a series of other questions.”
She is the youngest child of the late Alistair Fraser and the late Pat (nee Munro) Fraser, who lived at Balvattie Farm, on the Black Isle side of Muir of Ord.
Her late mother Pat was daughter of the last chief constable of Ross-shire, Finlay Munro, who resided in Station Road in Dingwall.
Dr Fraser recalled: “Funnily, we as a family used to jokingly refer to my mother as the walking Ross-shire Journal as she used to know lots of people and lots about what was going on in the district!
“My brother Hamish Fraser and his wife Trish still live at Balvattie Farm. My sister Sheena Parke, retired teacher at Dingwall Academy, lives in Dingwall, as does one of her daughters, Louisa.”
Her oldest sister Fiona lives in Portree on the Isle of Skye.
“When I first started as a soil scientist, the rural community was extremely dominated by men. I remember attending a field day where it was pointed out that I was the only woman out of about 150 people. Things have changed a lot though and now many more women come along to farming events. Perhaps I have played a small role in helping to instigate that change.”
Her oldest relation is her father’s sister, “my amazing auntie” Margaret MacKenzie. who lives in Culbokie. She turned 101 on October 31 and has supplied the locals with eggs since “as long as I can remember, and before that!”
Dr Fraser went to Tarradale Primary School in Muir of Ord from about 1972-78 and then on to Dingwall Academy between 1978-1984. She graduated from Aberdeen University in 1988 “and then managed to score myself a scholarship to do a PhD at Lincoln University in New Zealand”
The plan had been to stay for three years “but then after doing the PhD I got a job in 1992 and stayed on, got married, had three kids Alice (19), Heather (17) and Katie (15) and so am still here!”
The company she works for changed its name ten years ago to Plant and Food Research but she has essentially been working for the same company there, a crown research institute, for 28 years now.
Of her work, she said: “I initially did a lot of work to increase our understanding of the role of earthworms in soil, but have since also worked on a number of different soil-related research projects including the impacts of different crop residue, management practices and different land preparation practices in crop farming systems, and how these affect nitrate leaching – that is, losses of nitrogen from soil into water systems.”
Work into the use of plantain to feed to cattle in order to reduce the amount of nitrogen in their urine brings her back to a game called ‘soldiers’ with the plantain seed heads when she was at Tarradale.
She said: “When I first started as a soil scientist, the rural community was extremely dominated by men. I remember attending a field day where it was pointed out that I was the only woman out of about 150 people. Things have changed a lot though and now many more women come along to farming events. Perhaps I have played a small role in helping to instigate that change.”
