Welcome

Most of my research is focusing on strategies to reduce the environmental impact of food production while maintaining & improving productivity & nutritional quality. Working towards achieving the overall goal; the underlying aim is to:

"Investigate and exploit complex interactions between crop genetics, food production systems & the environment to improve crop health, yield & yield stability, resource use efficiency, & food quality - safety parameters in both temperate & semi-arid environments"

RESEARCH APPROACH

By following an integrated systems approach agriculture is considered as a system with complex interactions between its components i.e. the environment (biotic and abiotic) and the crop genotype. The systems' performance is altered by the agronomic practices (such as crop protection, fertilisation, irrigation and tillage) applied to manage the effects of the environment and hence improve yields. 

Each genotype’s performance level and eventually the ability to produce yield is different under various environments.  Multiple challenges to crop performance could be met effectively by altering the crop environment through the adaption of agricultural practices, the use of resistant varieties, and improving the crop genotype through plant breeding.

The integration of agronomy and plant physiology with functional genomics has the potential to reveal the regulatory control of gene expression as well as uncover mechanisms by which proteins control the metabolic patterns in plants. The integration of information generated by this process will reveal the mechanisms that plants use to respond to stress and produce yields and aid the development of:

• novel agronomic crop management strategies; including the use of climate-resilient crop species (i.e. underutilized and/or high protein crops), efficient/ resistant varieties and advanced agronomic management (i.e. diverse rotations, intercropping, plant growth-promoting inoculants, and waste-based precision fertilisers) to allow farmers to efficiently use resources;

• functional molecular markers for crop improvement 

• evidence-based agricultural decision support systems.