Roger Slack Award

The Roger Slack Award in Plant Biology is made annually by the Society to one of its members in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the study of plant biology. The first award was made in 2001, and was originally given the working title ‘The Outstanding Physiologist Award’.

In 2007 the award was renamed after Dr Roger Slack in recognition of his outstanding contribution as a plant biologist and biochemist in New Zealand, his role in the discovery of C4 photosynthesis (also known as the Hatch Slack Pathway), and his contribution as an early member of our society.  Roger was working with Marshall Hatch at the Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Brisbane when the pair provided the first description (Hatch and Slack 1966) of the photosynthetic pathway now known to operate in many tropical grasses, in which CO2 is first combined into 4-carbon acids before entering the 3-carbon PCR cycle.  In 1970 Roger was the recipient of the Goldacre Award from our sister society the Australian Society of Plant Scientists, an award that also recognises outstanding research by a society member, and later, together with Hal Hatch, the Charles F. Kettering Award of the American Society of Plant Physiologists and the Rank Prize for Nutrition. During the same year he joined the Plant Physiology Division of the DSIR where he soon began a collaborative study with Grattan Roughan, latterly of HortResearch, Mt Albert, and others, into the mechanisms of polyunsaturated fatty acid formation in plants, initially in leaves then also in oil seeds. This work established the key role of phosphatidyl choline in the endoplasmic reticulum in the formation of linolenic acid and largely explained how the characteristic acyl composition of the different plant lipids is determined. During the 1970’s Roger was a founding member of our society, as well as a member of the Biochemical Society.  He has also been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London (one of only around 40 New Zealand scientists to receive this honour), and the Royal Society of New Zealand.  Roger retired from Crop and Food Research in the year 2000 and spent his retirement in Palmerston North. He passed away in October 2016.

  • Eligibility for the award alternates. Every third year, the award is open only to members who are within 10 years of completing their highest qualification. This is followed by two years when all members become eligible regardless of the time since their highest qualification. The change from an alternating 2 year cycle to an alternating 3 year cycle was agreed at the 2017 AGM, and from 2019 was open to members within 10 years of completing their PhD for the first time under the new cycle.

  • The award is made on the merit of original research in one area, the findings of which have been published, or accepted for publication, in the five years preceding the year of the Award.

  • Applications or nominations should be forwarded to the Secretary.  The Award is made after deliberation by the Society council, and consists of a medal, a certificate, a plenary address at the Society’s annual conference, financial support (if necessary) to attend the conference, and the opportunity to prepare a review manuscript for the journal Functional Plant Biology.  Further details are given below in the ‘rules of the award’.

Recipients

Rules

The Award

The Candidate

Procedures

2025 Roger Slack (ECR) Award winner Soledad Perez-Santangelo and NZSPB President Lynette Brownfield at Plant Science Central.