Dr Sukumar Chakraborty: fighting wheat disease

Dr Sukumar Chakraborty researches wheat diseases including head blight and crown rot.

• 11 April 2006 | Updated 24 November 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Current activities

Dr Sukumar Chakraborty is interested in understanding epidemiology and population biology of necrotrophic plant pathogens to improve disease management.

Dr Chakraborty leads a research team on Fusarium pathogens causing head blight and crown rot in wheat with collaborators from across Australia and around the world.

Dr Chakraborty's work uses aggressiveness, toxigenicity and other pathogen fitness traits to acquire new knowledge on Fusarium populations. He applies this knowledge to:

• minimise the risk of new pathogen races damaging wheat varieties
• minimise the risk of mycotoxin contamination
• select and improve disease resistance in wheat.

Dr Chakraborty also conducts research to understand and predict impacts of climate change on plant pathogens and diseases. This work focuses on

• changes in host-pathogen interaction at rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in a Free to Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) facility
• the microevolution of Fusarium pathogens.

Background

Dr Chakraborty joined CSIRO in 1985 following a CSIRO postdoctoral award at INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research) in France.

As an epidemiologist, Dr Chakraborty’s research has been on the forecasting and management of diseases affecting sorghum, wheat and the tropical pasture legume stylo.

Academic qualifications 

Dr Chakraborty has been awarded the following degrees:

• Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Hons) BCKV, India, 1975
• Masters of Science, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, India, 1977
• Doctor of Philosophy, the University of Adelaide, South Australia, 1984.

Achievements

Dr Chakraborty led an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project, 1998-2003, involving over 30 scientists from five countries that generated new knowledge on pathogen population, epidemiology and disease resistance as the basis for sustainable use of stylo.

For his contributions as a foreign expert, Dr Chakraborty was awarded the Coconut Island Award by the Provincial Government of Hainan, China in 2001.

Dr. Chakraborty is an Honorary Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

He has been a member of the editorial board of Plant Pathology since 1998 and has published more than 135 peer-reviewed papers.

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