Neville Grace (1939–2022)

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Grace family.

It is with much sadness that we report the death of Dr Neville Donovan Grace (1939–2022). Neville was a long-standing member of the Editorial Board of the New Zealand Veterinary Journal, serving for 15 years from 2003 to 2018. As a researcher and advocate of pastoral livestock agriculture, he published 49 peer-reviewed articles in the Journal between 1994 and 2017. His findings on the mineral nutrition of grazing animals have been of tremendous interest and value to veterinarians and their farmer clients. New Zealand agriculture owes him a huge debt of gratitude. A memorial service was held on 1 June 2022 in Palmerston North, where tributes and recollections were shared among family, friends and colleagues. We would like to convey some of those to the many Journal readers who knew Neville and appreciated his contributions to veterinary science and practice.

Neville’s journey in science began when he was one of the “Class of 58”, a group of 58 students that was the inaugural class to study for the Science Intermediate degree at Massey Agricultural College in 1958. Neville was the only student who, in his very first year, stated that his aim was to graduate with a PhD—his path was clear from the outset. His commitment over the next 4 years of study for a BAgrSci earned him the academic rank of top student. Two of his peers at the time, Jock Macmillan and Marc Ulyatt, remember Neville as being very diligent, sometimes at the expense of comfort and congeniality. They were a couple of years ahead while at Massey, and recall that only senior students were given keys to the University Library to enable after-hours and weekend access for studies. Marc was probably the polar opposite of Neville when it came to socialising; on many weekends he was playing rugby at a fairly serious level and then partying into the wee hours. So Marc was less than impressed when an excessively academic guy named Nev came knocking on his door before 8:00 on a Sunday morning, asking for the key to the library!

For his dedication and academic excellence, Neville was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship Travel Award in 1968, which allowed him to complete a PhD degree at the University of Missouri in the USA. His research explored the nutritional metabolism of magnesium and potassium in guinea pigs under the guidance of Boyd O’Dell, a renowned leader in the field of minerals and trace elements. This training surely helped cement Neville’s conviction that science matters and has important consequences. His final examination was to formulate a diet for guinea pigs from scratch, using the fundamental nutrition principles he had learned. The grading for this exam was simple: the animals had to survive and thrive. Fortunately, the experiment was a success.

It was during his time at Missouri that Neville saw the need to adopt new technologies enabling reliable, high quality, quantitative data. He was introduced to the powerful analytical technique called atomic absorption spectroscopy, which boosted the detection and precision of trace element research. Later in his career this would greatly benefit his studies on the compositional analysis of animal tissues, particularly when working with difficult matrices such as bone. His enthusiasm for finding and applying the best possible methods continued with radioisotope tracers and inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy.

On completion of his PhD, Neville returned to Palmerston North to take up a position at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), in what became the Applied Biochemistry Division. The cycling of nutritional elements through the food chain had been of interest in the Division, so Neville focused on the intake, release and bioavailability of minerals in livestock animals, particularly with regard to phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, copper and molybdenum. A long series of systematic studies followed that determined the dietary requirements for various classes of sheep and beef cattle grazing pasture, but also extended to dairy cows (selenium and iodine), horses (copper), and even llamas. His quantitative measurements of the absorption of macro-elements from various sections of the digestive tract provided new insights into how diet affects the uptake of minerals and how individual elements differ in their absorption. Practical application of this research directly improved farm management practice.

In 1976 Neville was awarded a Nuffield Travelling Scholarship that allowed a sabbatical at the Moredun Research Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland. There he worked with Alec Field and Neville Suttle, two internationally recognised authorities in the trace element metabolism of ruminants, on sulfur and molybdenum interactions with copper metabolism. Neville found this sabbatical highly stimulating, recounting extended coffee break discussions when Alec aired a plethora of new ideas. He remained good friends and collaborators with those men for many years.

For convenience and, he often said, to jog his own memory, Neville collected his learnings about mineral nutrition for animals into concise books that appealed to expert and lay audiences alike. Starting in 1983, he edited and wrote many of the chapters in a mineral nutrition book for the New Zealand Society of Animal Production. It was a popular volume for many years. He later adapted that into a handy pocket edition in 1994, then gave it a thorough updating and expansion in 2010. The latter is one of Neville’s lasting and outstanding achievements; the publication of the definitive book “Managing Mineral Deficiencies in Grazing Livestock” along with co-authors Scott Knowles and Andrew Sykes (Lincoln University). It collects a lifetime of expertise into a comprehensive, scholarly reference focused on New Zealand’s pastoral grazing systems. It summarises the data of hundreds of animal studies about the diagnosis and prevention of trace- and macro mineral deficiencies into a format that can be understood and implemented by veterinarians, farmers, consultants and students. True to Neville’s philosophy, the book emphasises avoiding indiscriminate administration of supplementation, for the sake of cost and to minimise the risk of overdosing with regard to animal health and acceptable concentrations in product for human consumption. The book was a standard issue guide for Ravensdown field officers and a recommended textbook for BVSc students at Massey University. It is still in demand and remains the go-to reference for ruminant mineral topics in New Zealand agriculture.

Neville was at heart a problem solver and he hated to see people struggling if they could be helped along. This was evident in the successful advancement of novel animal remedies based on his research work. In the 1990s Neville, AgResearch scientist Julian Lee and their newly appointed post-doc Scott Knowles identified an opportunity to solve a wide-spread farming challenge: how to prevent vitamin B₁₂ deficiency in grazing sheep and lambs. Neville came up with a farmer-first solution based on long-acting injections that could provide nutritional requirements without a lot of fuss. The idea was that one treatment should suffice all the way to slaughter, so that mustering, handling and farmer costs could be kept to a minimum. There were no such products worldwide, so they invented a new approach based on microspheres loaded with vitamin B₁₂. When injected into an animal, these slowly break down, releasing the B₁₂ in a controlled manner. Later Neville figured out how to add long-acting selenium and iodine to the mix and so solve other nutrition problems. In 2003 this new technology was registered as SMARTShot, which continues to be manufactured in New Zealand and widely sold.

Neville’s achievements have been recognised by multiple awards. In 1997 he was honoured with the McMeekan Memorial Award for his outstanding contributions to animal production in New Zealand. The citation, written by Julian Lee and Tricia Harris, was a marvellous tribute to Neville’s achievements and included the following passage that nicely sums up Neville’s skill in communicating science to farmers:

Neville plays a very active role in transfer of his knowledge to the rest of the scientific community, and he has a vital concern to get his research across to the broader pastoral agriculture industry; both through consultancy groups and directly to farmers. His activity in this area is outstanding for a scientist who maintains such a strong strategic research profile and output. His ability to explain research issues at a practical level is a particular strength, the envy of many other scientists, […] and in demand to present to a wide range of farming and industry groups.

In 2010 Neville was also awarded Honorary Life Membership of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production for his understanding of macro- and trace element requirements of farm animals and for application of that knowledge to solving problems in the field. The citation written by Marc Ulyatt and Scott Knowles reads:

In the field of livestock mineral nutrition, Neville is justly famous for both authority and enthusiasm. When it comes to his science, he likes good data and good debate. He is driven to solve problems for the intellectual challenge and has the confidence to refute shonky or half-baked misinformation that is in the public domain. He then delivers answers and understanding to the people who need it most; the veterinarians, farmers, consultants and students directly responsible for making New Zealand agriculture successful.

Neville was a scholarly, kind, gentle and patient man. He was a respected authority yet never belittled other people’s opinions. He was much loved by AgResearch staff at the Palmerston North Grasslands campus and particularly by his colleagues and friends in the Animal Nutrition and Physiology, Rumen Microbiology, and Food Nutrition and Health teams that were based at the Alan Johns Building. He was always interested in the science going on in the group and was generous with his time for students and colleagues. Neville taught us how to listen to the farming and agriculture communities, to take on board the knowledge that comes from being on a farm every day, and then mould that information into testable experiments and worthwhile scientific outcomes.

Neville retired from AgResearch in September 2004 and was retained on a one-quarter-time contract until 2008. From then until 2020 (!) he volunteered his time and effort to AgResearch and external clients. Neville continued to be involved with all aspects of the research side of science, while enjoying a respite from its corporate and bureaucratic headaches.

Neville was a no-nonsense, practical and pragmatic kind of guy; he knew what he was here for, he understood what needed to be done to support agriculture and he got stuck in and did it, and he did it well. Neville’s work and the networks he established to communicate his science have touched on many different groups within AgResearch, Massey University, the New Zealand Veterinary Association and farming communities. He will be sadly missed. On behalf of all of Neville’s past and present science family we thank Neville for his outstanding contribution to livestock nutrition in New Zealand. May he rest in peace.