{"id":610,"date":"2021-01-29T13:00:39","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T00:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/?p=610"},"modified":"2021-02-01T06:57:03","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T17:57:03","slug":"alumni-series-jared-fudge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/alumni-series-jared-fudge\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Series – Jared Fudge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A love of plants hasn\u2019t led Otago-born Jared Fudge down the garden path; it has, though, taken him along some curious byways, from the chic streets of Geneva to London\u2019s famous Abbey Road.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Jared\u2019s journey signposts some of the more intriguing directions that a genetics career can go.<\/p>\n

Raised on a farm in Waikouaiti\u2014and inheriting a green thumb from his horticulturally-inclined grandparents\u2014it was little wonder that Jared chose to study botany at the University of Otago.<\/p>\n

At that point, though, his motivation was quite straightforward. \u201cI was curious about science,\u201d he says, \u201cand I wanted to know how the living world worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the more he learned about plant ecology, the more he wanted to find out about plant physiology, about how they functioned at the fundamental molecular level.<\/p>\n

Jared\u2019s interest blossomed (almost literally) during a plant biotechnology Masters, seeking to understand how plants \u2018perceive\u2019 day length and the winter cold\u2014and hence when to flower\u2014from a molecular genetics perspective.<\/p>\n

And while this prepared the ground for further academic study, the seeds for a suitable doctoral project had already been sown during a \u201ccompelling\u201d undergraduate course\u00a0on harnessing plant metabolism to benefit human health.<\/p>\n

With over two billion people suffering micronutrient deficiencies\u2014\u201cover-represented in low- and middle-income countries reliant on a single staple crop\u201d\u2014biotechnology offered a possible means to boost micronutrient levels and thus improve the well-being of \u201csome of the poorest people in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

Or as Jared explains, \u201cIt seemed a cool way of helping people while still studying plants.”<\/p>\n

This idea came to fruition with a PhD at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, looking at genetic ways to \u2018biofortify\u2019 important crops such as rice and cassava. (Rice and the starchy root vegetable cassava are major staple foods in the developing world, and in the absence of a more varied diet both can lead to nutrient deficiencies.)<\/p>\n

The research facilities in Geneva were incredible, Jared says, as too was the accommodation on offer; in contrast to Dunedin\u2019s student flats, he now ended up in an 18th century apartment on the swish Rue des Granges, in the heart of the old city of Geneva.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Illustration by Poppy Ollerenshaw Whittle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was another world and took a while to get used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apart from these pleasant surprises, though, and despite this being his first time in Europe, Jared reckons adapting to his new life wasn\u2019t difficult\u2014well, apart from an initial language problem. Although almost everyone spoke English, \u201cthey just weren\u2019t used to hearing a Kiwi accent,\u201d he says, \u201cso I had to become a bit more BBC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, after several busy years in a Geneva genetics lab and a spell writing up his thesis on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, it was time for a change. Less than a week after his PhD defence, Jared was settling in as a commissioning editor with the journal Frontiers in Plant Science in London. And while his initial Abbey Road address wasn\u2019t quite as elegant as in Geneva, thanks to the Beatles it was at least as memorable.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, it\u2019s been an enjoyable experience in publishing,\u201d Jared says. Having just become an assistant editor with the prestigious journal Current Biology, also in London, he\u2019s now looking forward to getting \u201cback closer to the science\u201d. Yet he\u2019s still got an earthy Otago attitude to his favourite subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you care about food,\u201d Jared says, \u201cyou should care about plant genetics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by Mick Whittle<\/p>\n

Image supplied by Jared Fudge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A love of plants hasn\u2019t led Otago-born Jared Fudge down the garden path; it has, though, taken him along some curious byways, from the chic streets of Geneva to London\u2019s famous Abbey Road. Indeed, Jared\u2019s journey signposts some of the more intriguing directions that a genetics career can go. Raised on a farm in Waikouaiti\u2014and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37560,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37560"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/go\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}