family background/ Tristan earned a master’s degree in horticulture from Stellenbosch University. He is married to Georgine and is the son of Linda Dorfling and Ralf Ketzer.
age/ 33
hometown/ Cape Town, South Africa
crops/ apples and pears
role/ pome rootstock project manager
business/ Provar

What was your path to farming?

After I did my schooling, I wasn’t intending on doing anything particular and took a gap year to do sound production at a theatre. I obtained a sound engineering qualification and worked for a year after that.

It was in that job that I realized I’m not an indoors kind of person. While searching for what I would want in a career, I got the idea to study horticulture. I’ve always been interested in plants. I was exposed to forests hiking with my dad when I was young.

Even though they were pine forests, they spurred my interest in growing things. I found studying horticulture fascinating because it was about gaining an understanding of a biological system outside of your own in order to manipulate it and achieve what you want from it.

It fed an interest in me that I didn’t get from the creative side of sound engineering. When I really started studying for my career at 23, I think I was far more focused than I would have been when I was 18. I thoroughly enjoyed the learning aspect of it. I knew what I was there for.

Why work in research instead of on a farm?

I’ve gone more toward horticulture science instead of working in horticulture commercially. Doing a master’s degree exposed me to that type of focus.

Whereas if I had got a job at a farm straight out of getting a bachelor’s degree, I think I would have taken an opportunity to work there instead of research. If I wasn’t doing research, it would feel like my work choices would be based solely on what could be earned, not on what’s learned.

Whereas, now after school, I get to work for a company that has me doing research and also earning the “rands and cents” at the same time. It’s not a university, it’s a private company and we need to make a profit.

But I get to help the company profit through my research. So, by hook or by crook, I ended up being able to get the best of both worlds: the scientific side of horticulture and the commercial side of horticulture, but through a business that is focused on science.

What are you doing now?

I’m doing apple and pear rootstock research, which on its own is quite a niche. I enjoy it because it’s practical. I inherited the portfolio with a lot of projects, and in that sense, the creativity part of it wasn’t lacking.

When I was in my undergrad, I don’t remember thinking I’d really love to be a rootstock researcher. It’s one of those things that as I worked toward my goal of getting my masters, the next thing I knew, the industry was asking me to do rootstock research.

Now I have the opportunity to see things that other people might not be able to see with rootstocks and formulate projects around those ideas, get funding and develop the plan to get answers to those initial ideas.

Where does your passion for research come from?

I think it’s a way to give something back. There’s a way to have a legacy. I don’t need to be recognized, but if something I’ve done has an impact, changes the way that people do things, there’ll be a legacy that I’ve left behind through that work, and that is really exciting for me.

Doing research that changes the trajectory of things is a cool effect of doing this work. I don’t plan on having children, so I suppose it’s maybe a way I can leave something behind for the future.

Why focus on rootstocks?

The research that I do involves decisions that potentially have longer-lasting impacts than cultivar choices. It’s possible to rework an incorrect choice when you talk about a cultivar. If you make an incorrect choice on a rootstock, you’ve got to replace the whole orchard, so there are very practical consequences to doing rootstock research.

We are very far from understanding rootstocks in their totality, and it’s not helping that they’re being constantly bred. New ones are being bred all the time. Potentially, we’re going to get to a place where there are too many, and that’s also problematic because it makes planting decisions for growers more complex.

Rootstock research is important because it’s nuanced, and you need people that can transfer that information over to growers and other researchers. It’s important to get people that are invested, people that care.

Because, if you don’t have a group of custodians doing that on the rootstock side, the growers will go in blind when planting an orchard, making a decision that will have huge consequences if they get it incorrect.