Celebrating International Women’s Day – Meet Deirdre Doyle

Today, Wednesday, March 8th, celebrates International Women’s Day – a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

To celebrate the day, Teagasc Daily spoke to a number of staff throughout the organisation to find out more about their roles and their career to date.

Deirdre Doyle is an Agronomy Technologist in Teagasc Oak Park and is current President of the Irish Tillage and Land Use Society (ITLUS). Deirdre completed her degree in Agricultural Science, specialising in Animal and Crop Production, from University College Dublin in 2012.

Deirdre continues her story:

I started as a technician in Teagasc in March 2013, working on the grass margins project (Enhancing biomass production from marginal lands with perennial grasses). After this, I moved on to the CIVYL project (Cereal Improvement through Variety choice and understanding Yield Improvement), which I worked on until its completion. While working on this project, I completed my MSc in Science from Aberdeen University. I started my current role as Agronomy Technologist in 2018, as part of the plant pathology team in Oak Park.

The field team consists of a research officer, two technicians and multiple summer placement students. The trials I work on mainly focus on fungicides, however I also manage some herbicide trials and have started work looking into biological products for plant protection also.

I am responsible for the experimental design and data analysis for approximately 100 research and commercial trials annually across the major arable production areas in Ireland. This covers all the main arable crops grown in Ireland including wheat, barley, oats, oilseed rape and potatoes, with trials conducted at various sites across the country to get a diverse range of disease pressures and variability.

The type of industry trials that I manage range from early development trials, product registration trials to product support trials that are carried out for both Irish and International companies. For the Teagasc research trials I manage, I work across a number of different projects including Future Cereal Disease Control in field crops, commercial trials, BioCrop and Enterprise Ireland Innovation to provide up to date information to advisors, farmers and industry.

My day to day work changes significantly depending on the time of year. As my role involves managing all the field trials from start to finish, it is my responsibility to organise trial design, regional site selection, seed ordering and preparation, sowing, trial permit application, labelling of trial plots, application of pesticides and fertiliser, efficacy and crop safety assessments, harvest, grain analysis, data dissemination and analysis, ARM file preparation and detailed report writing and communication to external stakeholders. Apart from managing the field trials, I have also presented trial results at different events such as the National Tillage Conference, Teagasc open days, Malting Barley Conference, student visits and crop walks and have contributed to Tillage Edge and Irish Farmers Journal podcasts, while also writing articles for newspapers and scientific papers.