My Story

I have more than 20 years of experience in agricultural research in Australia and overseas. I have made a number of contributions to plant breeding and Molecular Genetics. I have developed DNA fingerprinting keys, the first of its kind in the world, for the identification of radish cultivars. I have successfully created a trigenomic hexaploid, ‘Super Brassica,’ from the interspecific hybridisation between B. napus and B. nigra. After completing my PhD at UWA in 2010, I joined Canola Breeders Western Australia Pty Ltd. for the canola crossing programme and in the lupin marker project at UWA and CSIRO, where I was involved in developing molecular marker tools for improving the adaptation of wild and domesticated lupin. I also worked on the Tedera marker project at UWA and DPIRD, where I was responsible for in-vitro seed germination, assessing genetic diversity, selecting hybrids useful in developing new cultivars, and evaluating out-crossing rates. In 2016, I joined Batley lab, where I am primarily responsible for assessing genetic variation and genotype screening with traits of interest using different techniques of genotyping by sequencing (GBS) methods such as Restriction site Associated DNA Sequencing (RAD-Seq), double digest RAD-seq (ddRAD-Seq), skim sequencing and genome-wide association studies with the Illumina Infinium HD Assay. Currently, my research also involves interspecific crossing among Brassicaceae species to capture useful genes and to produce a population of trigenomic Brassica hexaploids with greater genetic variation to develop a new crop species that may be suitable for vegetables, oilseed crops or condiments which are more vigorous, better adapted and higher yielding than their diploid and tetraploid progenitors.