Canterbury, New Zealand
My goal is to develop plants for safe, productive agriculture in future environments. I'm passionate about genetics and breeding technologies, epigenetic adaptation to stress response and high-throughput phenotyping. I am always keen to collaborate with, learn from, and train others with similar interests. Our work with grapevine, the world's oldest domesticated fruit crop, gives us a unique insight into somatic variation and epigenetic adaptation. Thanks to a small genome, grapevine is a useful host to develop and test methods that are harder to apply in other crops.
I lead the development and implementation of the New Zealand Wine industry's Grapevine Improvement programme
Zebra Biotech works with local industries to develop, implement and automate genetic marker tests for crop species. Our focus is primarily on variety and rootstock identification for the New Zealand grapevine industry .
I provided bioinformatics support and training to staff and postgrads on a variety of projects. I also set up and administered cloud-based high-performance computing for Lincoln University researchers.
• Development of tagged mutant populations in plant crop species by mobilisation of endogenous transposable elements. • Characterisation of genomic and epigenomic changes associated with transposon mobilisation • Management of a modern PC2 plant biotech laboratory. • Postgraduate student supervision.
• Lectured laboratory and tutorial classes (biochemistry & microbiology) for undergraduate students.
• Developed a tool to track somatic mutations caused by endogenous retrotransposons in grapevine in real-time. • Studied the response of endogenous transposon families to abiotic and biotic stresses. • Produced a population of vines from grapevine somatic embryo cultures that show novel transposon polymorphisms and phenotypic variation.