As a late-blooming Plant Science student, Julie Sosso is committed to lifelong learning.
After graduating Plant Science with Honours in 2019, she dreamed of creating a viable agri-enterprise of her own. Julie drew inspiration from Karen Brock, the 2020 TAS AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award Winner, whose work in plant tissue culture inspired Julie to propagate a protected-cropping vanilla industry in Australia.
Her plan includes learning and mastering plant tissue culture to mass propagate Vanilla planifolia in sufficient numbers to establish a viable vanillery, then to investigate the feasibility of enlisting Australian native solitary bees to pollinate the vanilla flowers, to replace the labour-intensive hand-pollination method.