10.00 am Arrived at the Central Science Laboratory, met up with Ann and straightaway was given a white coat to put on! Ann’s official job title is ‘mycology diagnostician’ – luckily she quickly explained what that means in plain English! In the lab, we looked at some examples of diseased plants. Ann’s job is to find out exactly what type of disease is at work so that the growers can stop it spreading. 11.00 a.m Ann had just been sent some diseased daffodil bulbs - you could see the brown tips on the shoots. The grower wanted to know what the problem was, so Ann and her colleagues were going to investigate… Ann showed me how to examine the diseased part of the daffodil shoot under the microscope. She explained that it’s best to look at the very edge of the brown bit on the leaf as that’s where the disease is most active… Here’s an example of the kind of thing you can see through the microscope…These are called Helminthosporium solani spores. This fungus causes ‘Silver scurf’ on potatoes. (Look at your baking potatoes at home you might be able to see silvery patches on them.) Ann made notes on what she could see, what disease it could be and whether they’d need to do any more detective work… Here’s what it was. 13.00 Then it was time for lunch. 14.00 After lunch, Anne showed me another way to identify fungi. It's a method called Polymerase Chain Reaction (or PCR for short - phew!). First of all you have to extract some DNA from the plant. This tiny bit of DNA is then multiplied up so it can be visualised on an an 'electrophoresis' gel. (That's like a tray of clear jelly with an electric current running through it.) Here's a photo of a gel... Amazing to think that Ann can read those tiny patterns, and can identify what's causing the disease by comparing them with DNA patterns from other diseases. Time for a walk! In the greenhouse they keep plants that have diseases that don't otherwise exist in this country. These have to be kept in strict quarantine, so the greenhouse is sealed off from the rest of the centre, and all the water is boiled after it is used to kill any nasties that could spread disease… Being a plant scientist is totally different to anything you do at school, and I had a great day. If you fancy working in a lab then getting this kind of work experience is a great idea! To find out more about this type of career, check out Ann’s top tips!