Putting energy into things that matter – Mark McHenry

ark McHenry is a physicist, an innovator and an explorer of clean energy solutions. He’s worked on research projects in America, the Philippines and Mozambique and is an Associate Professor at Murdoch Uni’s Harry Butler Institute. He is also an avid organic veggie grower who loves sharing his passion for all things “geeky”.

“The way they teach you to think about physics at Uni basically gives you the fundamentals of everything,” Mark explains. “People often poo poo that statement and say it’s an oversimplification but by understanding the fundamentals you can understand 80 per cent of everything with 20 per cent of the information – as long as that information is correct.” Mark is currently putting his physics knowledge into numerous food and energy projects and one of his studies involves truffles. “The issue with truffles in Western Australia is its reliance on just one or two species of host trees and only one species of truffle. We’re looking at creating diversification of host trees and more varieties of truffles so the industry can be more resilient and have an extended season. We’re also looking at the related issue of fungicides as you can’t use fungicides when you’re trying to grow a fungus, which is what a truffle is.” So if your truffle-tree’s got pathogenic-fungus, what do you do?  Mark does what every good academic does. He looks at what’s already known. “All living things evolved to deal with the ultraviolet light that comes with sunlight. Research has recently discovered that the protective mechanism used by fungus to shield against UV  doesn’t occur at night. This means we can use the same UV frequency to target fungus without the use of chemicals. All you need to do is shine a simple UV light over the plant at night and voila! No more fungus. Just think of the powdery mildew on your pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers – you can grow them without mildew without using fungicides.”