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‘Auld Alliance’ alive and well at Auchincruive
From left to right: Anne, Edouard, Audrey and Laurianne (opens in new window)
Three French students joined a local Ayrshire sixth former on a work placement with the Land Economy & Environment Research Group at SAC Auchincruive. They helped SAC’s farmland biodiversity researchers with a wide variety of fieldwork and laboratory tasks linked with ongoing studies of the biodiversity value of intensively managed grasslands in Ayrshire.
The “Auld Alliance” was especially apt given that 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity.
Anne McMillan, from Carrick Academy in Maybole had gained a much sought after Nuffield Science Bursary Placement. It is designed to give fifth or sixth year secondary school students time in a research institute close to their home and experience what working within the science discipline they think they would want to make a career in is really like.
Edouard, Audrey and Laurianne are all students at ENSAT (École National Supérieur Agronomique de Tolouse) which is one of five French National Schools of Agricultural Science & Engineering. In their second year they spend 3 months abroad, training in range of investigative techniques and write a report. Their choice of SAC at Auchincruive reflects a long history of contacts between the SAC farmland biodiversity team and ENSAT, together with its former sister institute ENESAD (Établissement National d'Enseignement Supérieur d'Agronomie de Dijon).
The work the team were involved with is to increase the understanding of the factors affecting the insects, plants and farmland birds occurring in field margins, diffuse- pollution buffer-strips and water-margins on grassland-dominated farms. This Scottish Government funded biodiversity research links closely with some of the field sites being used in diffuse pollution mitigation research being conducted by both SAC and the Macaulay Institute in partnership with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.