Neil Ross – winner of the 2021 Australian Journal of Botany student prize

Australian Journal of Botany has long supported young plant scientists. In recent years, one of the ways the journal has done this is to award an annual prize for the best student paper. It is my pleasure to announce that the winner of the best student paper published in Australian Journal of Botany for 2021 is Neil Ross, of the University of new South Wales, for his paper, co-authored with Angela Moles, ‘The contribution of pathogenic soil microbes to ring formation in an iconic Australian arid grass, Triodia basedowii (Poaceae)’ (Ross and Moles 2021).

Spinifex grasses (Triodia spp.) are dominant grasses across Australia’s arid and semi-arid zones. These are hummock grasses, semi-spherical in growth form, which develop a distinct ring-form habit. The ring form is due to outward expansion of individual shoots and roots, coupled with die-back of the inner, older shoots and roots. Little is known about the mechanisms of die-back, but one possible mechanism, explored in this paper, is that pathogenic soil microbes might contribute to ring formation in Triodia basedowii. This hypothesis was tested experimentally, by growing seedlings in either sterilised or ‘live’ soil (i.e. unsterilsed), which was collected from either inside or outside the rings. Seedling emergence was lower in ‘live’ soil from inside the rings than in ‘live’ soil from outside the rings, and seedling emergence in soil from inside the rings was higher in sterilised soil than in unsterilised soil. These lines of evidence highlight the potential role of soil pathogens in determining the distinctive shape of Australian hummock grasses.

The judges – the Associate Editors and I – were impressed by the paper’s novelty, how the key questions were placed in context, its simple yet robust experimental design and sound statistical analyses, and how the findings enhance our understanding of Australian arid- and semi-arid ecosystems – systems that cover ∼75% of the continent.

It is also my pleasure to acknowledge the eight other student papers that were published in 2021. These covered a wide range of topics, taxa and ecosystems, and were of a very high standard:

• Farida Abubakari’s paper on fluoride hyperaccumulation in Gastrolobium species (Abubakari et al. 2021);

• Eda Addicott’s paper on vegetation classification and landscape scale mapping (Addicott et al. 2021);

• Bianca Amato’s paper on floral nectar storage (Amato et al. 2021);

• Ian Darby’s paper on micropropagation of Leptospermum polygalifolium and L. scoparium (Darby et al. 2021);

• Gabriela da Silva’s paper on resprouting shrubs in the Cerrado of Brazil (da Silva et al. 2021);

• Andrés García’s paper the soil seed bank of Nassella trichotoma (serrated tussock) (García et al. 2021);

• Glenn Hayward’s paper on fire and the endangered rainforest tree, Macadamia jansenii (Hayward et al. 2021); and

• Brendan Janissen’s paper on emergence and flowering in an endangered terrestrial orchid (Janissen et al. 2021).

On behalf of the editorial team at Australian Journal of Botany, and CSIRO Publishing, may I offer hearty congratulations to Neil and his fellow student authors – you are the future of plant science.