Friday Gray – winner of the 2019 Australian Journal of Botany student prize

The Australian Journal of Botany has a long and proud tradition of supporting the next generation of plant scientists. In recent years one of the ways we have done this is to award an annual prize for the best student paper. It is my pleasure to announce that the prize for best student paper for 2019 was won by Ms Friday Gray, of the University of Western Australia, for her paper ‘Provenance modulates sensitivity of stored seeds of the Australian native grass Neurachne alopecuroidea to temperature and moisture availability’, co-authored with Dr Anne Cochrane and Dr Pieter Poot (Gray et al. 2019).

Neurachne alopecuroidea (foxtail mulga grass) is widely distributed in South West Australia, an area that is projected to undergo warming and drying as a consequence of climate change. The study examined the sensitivity of seeds of N. alopecuroidea to variation in temperature and moisture conditions, using seed sourced from multiple populations along a temperature–aridity gradient in south-west Western Australia. The rationale was to test the potential adaptability of populations from different environments to changing conditions of temperature and moisture. A key finding was that there was resilience to warmer–drier conditions. A major implication is that land restoration strategies should use climate-adjusted seed sourcing, as a means of enhancing the species’ resilience to changing patterns of climate.

The judges – the Associate Editors and myself – were impressed by the paper’s novelty, its strong design that allowed predictions relating to climate change to be tested, the way the findings were linked to the wider literature, and how the findings could be applied in land management.

I also acknowledge the three other student papers that were published in 2019. These covered a wide range of topics, and all were of a very high standard:

• Annette Cavanagh’s paper on a typology of awns, based on an examination of 1024 native Australian grass species (Cavanagh et al. 2019);

• Bruno Dematteis’ paper on dispersal traits in South American populations of Senecio madagascariensis (Asteraceae) (Dematteis et al. 2019); and

• Peter Dufourq’s paper on the application of appropriate fire regimes to enhance the success of heathland translocation practices (Dufourq and Shapcott 2019).

Hearty congratulations to all our student authors – you are the future of plant science.