Professor Stewart is Director of the Bio-Protection Research Centre, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence based at Lincoln University in Christchurch, New Zealand. The focus of the Centre is on research and training in the development and implementation of sustainable plant bioprotection technologies. 

Professor Stewart is a plant scientist whose main research interest is on plant disease management. She leads the Plant Disease Biocontrol Research Group in the Centre which is aimed at developing microbe-based control methods and management systems, in particular, the use of beneficial Trichoderma strains for control of soil-borne diseases. Trichoderma studies range in diversity from molecular characterisation of biocontrol strains, metabolite profiling, strain selection, mechanism of action studies through to commercial field evaluation. In partnership with Agrimm Technologies Ltd, a Christchurch-based bio-inoculant company, Professor Stewart has commercialised four Trichoderma products for control of onion white rot, Sclerotinia lettuce drop, and Botrytis diseases of grape and tomato. 

Professor Stewart completed PhD studies in plant-microbe interactions at Wye College, University of London in 1984. She then took up a lecturing position in the Botany Department at the University of Auckland where she remained for 10 years before moving to Lincoln University in 1995. She was appointed the first female Professor at Lincoln University in1998. She has published more than 300 refereed journal articles, books and conference papers and contributed to many professional societies, committees and advisory panels in the areas of plant biosecurity, biodiversity and bioprotection. 

She received the Lincoln University Excellence in Research Award in 1997, the Agricom Significant Achievement Award in 2001, the AgResearch Technology Transfer Award in 2002 and the MAFBNZ Biosecurity Award for Excellence in 2008. She was elected a Fellow of the NZ Institute for Agricultural and Horticultural Science in 2006 and, in 2009, was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) in recognition of her services to biology, in particular plant pathology.

Back to list