My grandad was a farmer and my mum was brought up on the farm, so agriculture is in my blood. I used to help grandad out at weekends at the agricultural college he worked at after he sold the farm and loved working with the cattle and sheep. At school, we did some basic genetics and inheritance - learning about Gregor Mendel and his peas - and that is what really drew me into the field of genetics. When I was in my second year of university I got the opportunity to go and observe a company working on a local farm doing embryo transplants and I talked to them about genetics in agriculture, I think from that moment I knew that I ultimately wanted to combine my love of agriculture and genetics to make a difference to the community that brought me up.