No Result A Good Result

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31836, 14 November 1968, Page 2

No Result A Good Result

After four years of searching for toxic fungi, in poultry foods, Miss Barbara Peddie, who has just completed her thesis for her Ph.D. in microbiology at Lincoln College, has given poultry foods in New Zealand the “all clear” signal.

Her research was financed by the New Zealand Poultry Board after the discovery in England of a toxic substance in a poultry food which was killing chickens. This particular hen food was not used in New Zealand but the board was anxious to discover if there were any toxic fungi in local poultry foods.

None of the fungi which she isolated and fed to young chickens had any fatal effect upon them and she has mixed feelings about this.

“I would have preferred to have discovered a toxic fungus but from the poultry farmer’s point of view, it is far better that I didn’t,” she said.

She kept day-old chicks in two brooders in a back shed Lincoln, and until they were about a month old and too big to be kept under the same conditions she fed them a series of fungi from the poultry foods. Althugh she wished them no harm, their persistant good health was academically frustrating. “At times it was very frustrating. 1 kept trying different approaches and when I

got nothing from them, I had to use different techniques.” She admits now that there were many times during the first two years when she seriously contemplated giving up her research, but after that she relaxed with the thought that she had gone too far to turn back. Three years were spent in research and she spent her fourth year writing her thesis, which she has just completed. Although her study programme did not have obvious climaxes, she found her work quite-inter-esting. One of a family of four, Miss Peddle was educated at Christchurch Girls’ High School and got her bachelor of science degree with honours at Canterbury University. Her father. Dr S. C. Peddie, is a medical man and her three brothers have followed careers fairly similar to her own. One is a chemistry teacher, one is at Medical School and the third is at the Dental School in Dunedin. While at school, Miss Ped-

die contemplated a degree in English but she decided against it as the future seemed to lie in teaching, which she definitely did not want. “But the way I am going at the moment, I will probably teach anyway," she said yesterday. Her immediate future lies in Canada. In a week she will leave Christchurch to take up a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Guelph, which is 40 miles from Toronto. This time her study would be devoted to soil microbiology, probably the respiration of micro-organisms, she said.

Early Identity.—The first white child to be born in Murchison, Mrs Annie Eliza Crumpton, died in Greymouth yesterday at the age of 97. The daughter of pioneer parents, she lived in Murchison until her marriage to the late Mr Albert Ernest Crumpton.