Peter Langridge
Chair of the Scientific Board
Peter chairs the Scientific Board of the Wheat Initiative and the Australian National Committee for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Adelaide, Honorary Professor at Murdoch University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering and Honorary Fellow of Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. He is also a member of the Order of Australia. His research has focused on the role of genetic technologies in crop improvement.
HANS BRAUN
Hans led the joint TÜRKİYE/CIMMYT/ICARDA winter wheat programme based in Türkiye from 1985-2005. He was the director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program in Mexico from 2005 until his retirement in 2021. . . Hans is familiar with wheat-based cropping systems worldwide.
Sylvie Cloutier
A scientist with AAFC since 1995, Sylvie’s research focuses on genetics, genomics and epigenetics of wheat and wild relatives. She leads a pre-breeding program in wheat to identify new sources of disease resistance from wild relatives and coordinates a national phenotyping program in both winter and spring Triticum and Aegilops species.
FIONA DOOHAN
Fiona is Professor of Plant Health at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research is focused on developing environmentally sustainable means of increasing cereal resilience, resistance to disease, and nutritional content. She is also co-founder of the company CropBiome, focused on developing biologicals for the enhancement of crop productivity. She has attracted over 20-million-euros of funding for her research programme and over 10 million for national doctoral training, supervised over 32 doctoral students and published over 100 peer-reviewed papers. She was a recipient of the UCD Innovation Award in 2021, was listed in the top 100 female Irish scientists and was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2022.
SILVIA GERMAN
Silvia has been a wheat and barley breeder since 1979, focusing on breeding for wheat disease resistance. Her research also included epidemiology of rust diseases of wheat and barley, race identification, host-pathogen interaction and dentification of sources of resistance, genetics of resistance. Further, her research covered introgression of minor, durable rust resistance genes in adapted germplasm, combined with resistance to other important diseases such as fusarium head blight. She participated in the release of 36 bread wheat cultivars and one malting barley cultivar, responsible for the release of six malting barley cultivars, and trained and supervised young scientists and postgraduate students (M. Sc.) in the field of plant pathology, genetics and breeding. In 2017, Silvia retired from her position as a principal researcher at the National Agricultural Research Institute (INIA) of Uruguay, but continues to collaborate with her research team, leads one research project and supervises one Ph.D. student on wheat stripe rust epidemiology and resistance. She is engaged in international cooperation, represented Uruguay and Latin America in different committees and organisations.
Kevin Pixley
Kevin, Director Dryland Crops Program and Director Global Wheat Program, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). He is a plant breeder experienced in international agricultural research for development, mainly in Africa and Latin America. His research includes links between agriculture, nutrition and health, use of genetic resources in breeding, and climate change resilience through new varieties for innovative cropping systems.
John Snape
John was Head of the Department of Crop Genetics at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK from 1992 until his retirement in 2010, with a background of over thirty-seven years research on cereal genetics and biotechnology, particularly wheat, first at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge, and then at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK.
Hisashi Tsujimoto
Hisashi specialises in germplasm enhancement by introducing genes from wheat-related species (Prebreeding). Further fields include wheat taxonomy and evolutionary research, wide hybridization and chromosome engineering, and breeding for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
CHRIS BURT
Chris provides a strategic lead for teams providing support to global wheat breeding programmes at RAGT. This includes genotyping, genomics, glasshouse services, end-use quality testing, and pathology. He is also responsible for both internal and collaborative research and development as RAGT strive to improve their understanding of wheat genetics and to be more efficient in their breeding processes.