Simone Heimoana has gone off sugar. She doesn’t put it in her tea and she doesn’t add it to her cooking. That might have something to do with one of her research projects,

which involves mixing up artificial honeydew and spraying it on cotton bolls to study the effects.

“i wouldn’t say i have a sweet tooth, but i do find myself licking my fingers quite a bit when i’m doing these experiments,” Simone says.

Honeydew may taste nice, but it can be a major problem for cotton producers. A sticky, sugary liquid secreted by insects including aphids and white flies, honeydew can gum up spinning equipment when badly contaminated cotton is sent for processing. it can also interfere with photosynthesis, as recent research conducted for Simone’s PhD has shown.

“When aphids deposit honeydew on cotton leaves, the leaves become sticky and attract dust,” Simone says. “This dust stops sunlight from reaching the plant. if the problem is bad enough, this can interfere with photosynthesis, which in turn reduces yield.”

Aphid feeding is also known to interfere with photosynthesis, so together these two phenomena can have a serious impact – in some cases, reducing yield by up to 40 per cent.

Simone’s experiments are looking at mitigating factors in honeydew contamination, including the weather. This involves spraying cotton trial plots with artificial honeydew, then ‘raining’ on them with overhead irrigators to see how much gets washed off.

As a research project officer at CSiRo’s myall Vale cotton research facility, Simone assists her supervisor, Lewis Wilson, with research investigating cotton’s complex relationship with insects and the environment.

“We are not entomologists as such,” Simone says. “What we are interested in is the interaction between insects and plants. We are looking at the impact that insects have during different phases of cotton growth, and how best to control them in order to maximise yield and quality.”

originally from Germany, Simone started her career in grazing animal production at Queensland Agricultural College. This was followed by a masters in quarantine biology, which eventually led her to Tonga, where she worked on controlling fruitfly. The chance spying of an advertisement for a job in cotton research led her to myall Vale, where she has been working for the past 15 years.

As a research technician with active research interests of her own, Simone brings both practical and theoretical skills to her work.

“i like working for CSiRo because i feel we provide good quality data and people feel they can really trust us,” Simone says. “i also feel lucky to be in a location where we get a lot of co-operation from growers and industry.”

22 — The Australian Cottongrower June–July 2013

Simone Heimoana.

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While some experiments can be tedious – pinning 200 cotton bolls and infesting them with green vegetable bugs, for instance – Simone says she enjoys her work very much.

“Sometimes a grower rings up with a particular insect problem or a level of infestation we have never seen before,” Simone says. “We use our knowledge and resources to assist them, but at the same time we are learning about what happens in the field.

“We are very open to people coming to us with their

problems,” she says.Simone says the best part of her job is having the opportunity

to come up with new experiments and quickly translate these ideas into action.

“Sometimes we will have an idea and just swing into town to the hardware shop and grab the things we need,” Simone says. “it’s having that chance to try new things and see whether they work in practice that keeps my job interesting.”

24 — The Australian Cottongrower June–July 2013

Cotton bolls after the applications of some of Simone’s artificial honeydew (right).

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