Alice Hayward

Alice is a plant biotechnologist and physiologist leading a strong outcome-driven team at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation. Her team focuses on plant tissue culture as a platform technology delivering solutions for agriculture and ecosystems. This includes developing commercial-scale methods for year-round propagation of clean, true-to-type plants for horticultural industries, with impacts for growers, supply chains and breeding programs. This technology is also being adapated to accelerate horticultural crop improvement using gene editing and non-GM in vitro breeding tools for trees, fruits and vegetables. Her team boasts leading experts in cryopreservation for long-term conservation of plant genetic diversity - essenital to secure the breeding materials critical for Australia's tropical crops and endangered biodiversity. Example projects with impact include: 1) Commercial-scale tissue culture pipelines for propagation of species including avocado, turmeric and macadamia, 2) Cryopreservation success for securing the germplasm of avocado and macadamia, and 3) The first in vitro conservation tools developed for Australian native plants critically impacted by pandemic myrtle rust - one of the biggest biosecurity threats to Australia's ecosystems. Alice is also exploring exciting innovations in plant tissue culture including cellular horticulture. She is passionate to support industry access to highest quality disease free planting materials and preserve the plant species that are core to our ecosystems and food production systems. Her vision is to support the adaptibility and security of our food- and eco- systems in response to global change.