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Legume Engineering Team

The Legume Engineering Team has been working in the field of legume biotechnology for the last 30 years. The team has developed transformation protocols for several species including chickpeas, cowpeas, garden peas and lupins. They have worked with these species in different areas including improving nutritional composition and insect protection. A major milestone was achieved in 2019 with the development and commercial release in Nigeria of the Bt cowpea variety Sampea 20-T, the world first GM cowpea. This cowpea is resistant to the pod-borer, Maruca vitrata, a major pest of this crop in West Africa. It is expected that this research will have a major impact and help to reduce hunger and rural poverty of a large portion of the Nigerian population.

Miss Lisa Molvig

Senior Experimental Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Andy Moore

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Ms Jenny Gibson

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Luch Hac

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr TJ Higgins

Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Javier Atayde

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Microbial Technologies Team

The Microbial Technologies Team exploits the strengths of beneficial microbes and the weaknesses of pathogens to develop novel crop protection solutions and animal feed supplements. The team's research approaches involve a broad range of disciplines from comparative -omics, analytical chemistry, microbial engineering and fermentation systems, plant genetics, plant pathology, and field trial evaluation over multi-environments. Through both basic strategic research and applied research to deliver industry specific outcomes, they deliver novel approaches for manipulating biocontrol microbes, microbial solutions for targeting decreased methane emission from ruminant livestock, and strategies to enhance crop resistance gene durability.

Mr Lijun Tian

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Jianping Zhang

Postdoctoral Fellow - Science (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Jian Chen

Postdoctoral Fellow - Science (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Katharina Belt

Visiting Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Marta Gallart Diumenge

Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Margaret Ramarajan

Postdoctoral Fellow - Science (Agriculture & Food)

Crown Rot Resistance Team

The Crown Rot Resistance Team aims to reduce impacts of soil/stubble-borne necrotrophic fungal pathogens in crop production by improving breeding technology. We identify novel loci conferring resistance, develop diagnostic markers, and incorporate resistance into elite wheat and barley lines for breeding programs to exploit. To accelerate research output and interrogate new science questions, we also exploit methodologies for enhancing the capacity to handle large and complex plant genome datasets.

Dr Chunji Liu

Chief Research Scientist

Ms Caritta Eliasson

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Zhi Zheng

Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Miss Renee Su

Postgraduate (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Andrew Urquhart

Visiting Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

GM Technologies Team

The GM technologies team develops cutting edge genetic engineering solutions for crop plant protection against fungal pathogens. The team is a pioneer in generating multi-gene cassettes for providing durable resistance against wheat rusts. The team is also working on developing synthetic disease resistance strategies in addition to providing biotech solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock.

Dr Michael Ayliffe

Group Leader (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Aihua Wang

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Ming Luo

Senior Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Ms Soma Chakraborty

Experimental Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Ms Dhara Bhatt

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Brenton Brooks

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Tom Loan

Postdoctoral Fellow - Science (Agriculture & Food)

Data Intensive Approaches Team

The Data Intensive Approaches Team uses data-driven approaches to accelerate knowledge discovery in plant-pathogen interactions. The team develops state-of-the-art methods encompassing all areas of plant-pathogen interactions such as effector prediction, resistance gene identification, genomics as well as digital disease diagnostics.

Dr Chunhong Chen

Experimental Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Narayana Upadhyaya

Honorary Fellow (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Tim Hewitt

Postdoctoral Fellow - Science (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Matthias Jost

Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Geetha Perera

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Ms Zoe Campbell

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Megan Outram

Postdoctoral Fellow - Science (Agriculture & Food)

Gene Discovery Team

We are a diverse team, with expertise in resistance gene identification and characterisation. Our work includes mining diverse germplasm collections for novel sources of resistance, gene mapping, gene cloning and functional characterisation of genes using in vitro and in planta screening systems. We are also interested in the deployment of validated genes into elite germplasm for inclusion in breeding programs.

Dr Kathy Dibley

Research Scientist & Team Leader, Gene Discovery

Ms Jun Yang

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Sam Periyannan

Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Evans Lagudah

Chief Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Mr David Lewis

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Mrs Jasmine Rajamony

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Ms Lina Ma

Research Technician (Agriculture & Food)

Ms Amy Mackenzie

Postgraduate (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Ricky Milne

Research Scientist (Agriculture & Food)

Miss Diksh Preet Kaur Raina

Postgraduate (Agriculture & Food)

Mr Mike Norman

Postgraduate (Agriculture & Food)

Dr Peter Dodds

Science Leader (Agriculture & Food)

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