When Angus Dingley was in Year 12, he knew a career in science was on the cards, but exactly what discipline he wanted to explore was something he still needed to figure out.
A Sydney local with no experience on the land, he made an unexpected choice.
“I enrolled in a Bachelor of Rural Science at UNE on a whim without really knowing what it entailed,” he says.
“Luckily, I ended up taking to agronomy like a duck to water and just fell in love with it. It put those foundational disciplines such as maths, biology and chemistry into practice which was really exciting.”
Swapping the concrete of the city for the paddocks of the New England, he began to settle into his new life at St Albert’s College.
“I really loved college, it was all so new getting to live with friends, and it was so convenient being close to lectures and classes,” he says.
“All of my mates in Sydney had really negative experiences with university and they were so disconnected from the people doing their course, whereas I could name all the people who did Rural Science in my year- I knew them all because I saw them every day.”
By third year, Angus was immersing himself in work experience and was eager to get a taste of everything the agricultural sciences had to offer. After stints working on cotton farms, vegetable farms, and beef enterprises, he finally found his calling.
“I ended up doing four weeks in a tomato greenhouse, and I loved how I could control more of the scientific elements that go into growing protected crops,” he says.
“Because you’re growing things inside, you can control how much moisture you give them, what the temperature is, and you’re excluding a lot of the pest and diseases. The scientist in me really enjoys the measurability and the quantifiability of the whole growing process.”
I’m glad I didn’t rush into anything because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking your time and exploring your options.
Fast forward to today, he’s just completed his final year and is set to graduate with First Class Honours for his thesis looking into the acoustic pollination of tomato crops, which he undertook with the Future Food Systems CRC at the Western Sydney University campus.
“The bumblebee is the traditional pollinator of tomatoes, however, it’s a banned species here in Australia,” he says.
“This means we have to artificially pollinate commercial tomato crops by manually shaking the flower to recreate the movement that a bumblebee would naturally make. At the moment, this is a costly and labour-intensive process. What my project was looking at was whether we could recreate the sound that’s made by the bumblebee’s vibrations to see if that alone could be enough to pollinate the crops.”
While the final data is yet to be released, Angus’ literature review was published in the MDPI Agronomy Journal last year, which was the first piece of research to be made available as part of the project. On top of this, his work saw him awarded Runner Up for the prestigious Ag Institute Australia Chris Russell Medal of Excellence, which recognises some of NSW’s brightest undergraduate researchers.
Angus plans to continue his work in tomatoes and horticulture, and plans to embark on a PhD in the coming months. When asked if he wishes he found his niche sooner, he says he’s glad he took the time to figure out what he truly wanted to do.
“I’m glad I didn’t rush into anything because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking your time and exploring your options,” he says.
“Sometimes people think they need to rush everything, but we actually have so much time. No matter how long you wait, your passion will eventually find you.”
You can find Angus’ published literature review here.
