Dr Simon Southerton: unlocking the genetic secrets of trees

Dr Simon Southerton is working to capitalise on the natural genetic variability in plantation tree species to breed better performing trees for the Australian forest industry.

• 23 April 2008 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications

Dr Simon Southerton is a molecular biologist who is examining the genetics of forest trees in an effort to develop molecular tools to accelerate breeding of superior varieties of plantation trees for Australia.

Current activities

Dr Southerton is currently leading:

• applied genomics/association studies projects on eucalypts and pines
• strategic functional studies in eucalypts and model species, including tobacco and Arabidopsis
• studies aimed at developing trees that use water more efficiently and that are better adapted to drought.

Dr Southerton’s research is primarily aimed at identifying naturally occurring genetic variation in genes that control commercially important wood traits.

Once identified, better performing trees will be bred using gene-assisted selection.

This work will benefit the Australian forestry industry through the development of pine trees that produce better structural timber and eucalypts that produce more pulp of higher quality per unit of wood.

Background

Dr Southerton was awarded a CSIRO post-doctoral fellowship to study in the Sainsbury Laboratory, John Innes Centre for Plant Science Research, Norwich in the United Kingdom in 1990.

In 1992 he took up the position of research scientist at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia where he studied genes that regulate floral development in eucalypts.

He left CSIRO in 1994 and worked as a research scientist at ForBio Research Pty Ltd in Queensland, Australia where he continued his studies on floral molecular biology.

He briefly joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Queensland, Australia in 1997 as a senior research scientist, before returning to CSIRO as a senior research scientist in the Forestry and Forest Products Division in 1999.

Dr Southerton is now with CSIRO Plant Industry with research focused primarily on molecular breeding for improved wood traits in Australia’s major forest plantation species.

Academic qualifications

Dr Southerton has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with First Class Honours from The University of Sydney in 1985.
• Doctor of Philosophy in Plant Pathology and Agricultural Entomology from The University of Sydney in 1990.

See a list of scientific papers published by Dr Southerton on the next page.