Looking back and looking forwards: BPD Full Team Meeting March 2023

A dusting of snow coated the city as our project teams, coordination team and guests arrived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Early March 2023 might have brought a ‘second winter’, but Debbie Frederickson-Matika had arranged for a warm welcome at St James Park, home of Newcastle United Football Club.

Although the Bacterial Plant Diseases Programme has been running since 2020, due to COVID, this was only the second time we have been able to meet up in person (the first was this time last year). This meant everyone was keen to catch up with old friends and make new acquaintances. The meeting, which ran across 2 days, was all about sharing research progress and, as we come into our final year, looking to the future and thinking about what our legacy might be.

After a second breakfast of stotties (a local speciality), day one began with an icebreaker to get everyone chatting. BPD Events Coordinator Sarah McLusky had devised a picture quiz. With Google banned the only way to identify the places pictured was to go around the room and find someone who lived or worked in that city.

With the ice well and truly broken we moved on to research updates. For the rest of the day each project gave a progress update with questions from the gathered audience. Although much of this is work in progress and can’t be shared yet, it was impressive to see how much the projects have achieved in recent months with results coming thick and fast.

The first day ended with a poster session – a welcome opportunity to dig into some of the research details which couldn’t be covered in the 20 minute talks. It was also a change for everyone to see posters which had previously been shared at specialist conferences in recent months including Gareth Thomas’ prize winning poster from the International Plant Health Conference.

Unsurprisingly given the venue, football was a strong theme throughout the event. At lunchtime there was an opportunity to see inside the stadium. Cue many selfies with the hallowed Toon turf in the background (even though we discovered that Liverpool was the most supported team amongst our delegates). Day one closed with a chance to relax and connect over dinner in the Bobby Robson suite – named after the local footballing legend.

Day 2 brought more snow and a shift in focus. The day began with brief updates from three ECRs who have recently had the opportunity to go on placements in other labs, including Cambridge biotech company Novogene and the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) in Barcelona. We’ll be sharing more about these placements soon. This was followed by an introduction to the PhytoBacExplorer project from David Studholme. This BPD spin-out will create a genome database of plant disease-causing bacteria.

We then welcomed Amanda and Paul Dixon from North East Social Media for a training session on creating short videos using smartphone cameras and apps. It’s not often you are encouraged to play with your phone during a meeting but it was a journey of discovery. For many it was the first time they had used our phone video cameras, and we discovered unknown phone settings and handy apps. There is now talk of a BPD video competition – watch this space!

To close the meeting we turned our attention to what the collective legacy of the BPD Programme might be. Opening reflections from Debbie Harding of UKRI and Gerry Saddler, Chief Plant Health Officer for Scotland, helped to put the projects research in a wider context. Mariella Marzano and Sarah McLusky then took the group through a collective brainstorming exercise. Participants were challenged to think about what legacy the programme might leave under 5 headings – public awareness, policy outputs, practitioner outputs, cross-project science outputs and online presence. The Coordination Team will use the collected thoughts to develop a plan for bringing some of the suggestions to life.

Then, it was time to head home. With more snow forecast many grabbed lunch to go before heading out to face the elements, reflecting as they went on this opportunity to reconnect with old friends, develop new collaborations, share knowledge and be part of a community which feels like more than the sum of its parts.

By Sarah McLusky, BPD Programme Events and Communications Coordinator