Group Leader - Pests & Diseases
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 (Agriculture & Food)
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.
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)