Find an expert

Dr Mobashwer Alam is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Horticultural Science, a theme leader of Predictive Agriculture for Improved Productivity and Value, an Advance Queensland Industry Fellow, and the team leader of the National Passionfruit Breeding and Evaluation Program (PF22000) at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, UQ. He is currently based at Maroochy Research Station, Nambour, QLD 4560, Sunshine Coast. He has more than twenty years of research and teaching experience in the public and private industries and in universities in Australia and Bangladesh. Dr Alam has experience in multi-disciplinary research, including plant breeding, quantitative genetics, genomics, plant physiology, and crop modelling. Before joining at QAAFI, Dr Alam had been working as a Senior Plant Breeder (Grain Sorghum) at Nuseed Pty Ltd. He achieved his PhD in plant molecular genetics through the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences of the University of Queensland. Before coming in Australia in 2008, Dr Alam had been working as a lecturer and assistant professor of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding at Patuakhali Science and Technology University in Bangladesh. Throughout his academic and research career, he worked on multiple crops, including Macadamia, Passionfruit, Stone Fruits, Sorghum, Sugarcane, Lablab Bean, Tomato, Okra, and Ash Gourd. He is interested in developing rapid breeding tools and utilizing plant genomics in horticultural crop improvement.

Summary of Research:

• My current research at UQ is as Professor in this School (teaching AGRC3040 Crop Physiology) and as an Affiliate Professor of QAAFI. Since 2020, with full-time appointment at UQ, my research portfolio has included multiple projects in applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence into the ag domain. This area is developing rapidly and across UQ, I am engaging with faculty in multiple schools (ITEE, Maths and Physics, Mining and Mech Engineering) as well as in the Research Computing Centre to develop new projects and training opportunities at the interface of field agriculture and these new digital analytics.
• My career research has been around genetic and environment effects on physiology of field crops, particularly where drought dominates. Application of quantitative approaches (crop simulation and statistical methods) and phenotyping (aerial imaging, canopy monitoring) to integrate the understanding of interactions of genetics, growth and development and the bio-physical environment on crop yield. In recent years, this work has expanded more generally into various applications in digital agriculture from work on canopy temperature sensing for irrigation decisions (CSIRO Entrepreneurship Award 2022) through to applications of deep-learning to imagery to assist breeding programs.
• Much of this research was undertaken with CSIRO since 1996. Building on an almost continuous collaboration with UQ over that time, including as an Adjunct Professor to QAAFI, Prof Chapman was jointly appointed (50%) as a Professor in Crop Physiology in the UQ School of Agriculture and Food Sciences from 2017 to 2020, and at 100% with UQ from Sep 2020. He has led numerous research projects that impact local and global public and private breeding programs in wheat, sorghum, sunflower and sugarcane; led a national research program on research in ‘Climate-Ready Cereals’ in the early 2010s; and was one of the first researchers to deploy UAV technologies to monitor plant breeding programs. Current projects include a US DoE project with Purdue University, and multiple projects with CSIRO, U Adelaide, La Trobe, INRA (France) and U Tokyo. With > 8500 citations, Prof Chapman is currently in the top 1% of authors cited in the ESI fields of Plant and Animal Sciences and in Agricultural Sciences.

Dr. Javier A. Fernandez is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Queensland. His research specializes in crop physiology, plant nutrition, corn production, and crop modelling reflected by over 30 articles (refereed journal publications, extension articles, conference proceedings, and others). He is currently engaged in the use of statistical, digital, and model technologies to assess crop growth and development, with the overall goal of enhancing production, resource use efficiency, and sustainability of agricultural systems in Australia. Javier received his BS in Agricultural Engineering from Universidad Nacional del Nordeste in Argentina, and his PhD in Agronomy from Kansas State University. He is recipient of several honours and awards from university, professional societies, and governmental organizations, including two Fulbright Commission scholarships.

Prof. David Jordan is a sorghum breeder and geneticist with more than 20 years experience working in both the public and private sector.

For the last decade he has led the public sorghum pre-breeding program in Australia which is a partnership between the University of Queensland (UQ), The Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) and the Grains research and Develop Corporation (GRDC). This is a long running and successful research effort with a reputation for integrating across disciplines and linking research efforts from the strategic to the applied. Breeding lines from this program are widely used commercially in Australia and internationally with 100% of the commercial sorghum grown in Australia having genetics from the program. At the same time the research group continues to produce research papers at the forefront of sorghum research.

In recent years he had led projects focused on improving the lives of resource poor farmers in Africa that rely on sorghum.

A/Prof Jaquie Mitchell's activities are focused around two core themes.Jaquie has worked on various Research for Development (R4D) projects based in South-East Asia with the aim of improving productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Currently she leads two R4D projects one focused on developing an integrated weed management package for mechanised and broadcast lowland crop production systems in Laos and Cambodia. While the other is a first of its kind, public private partnership between ACIAR and a private agribusiness company, aiming to establish a highly productive, sustainable, traceable, quality-assured value chain for rice in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, benefiting rice-farming households and meeting the market requirements of SunRice’s established global customers.

The second research theme includes examining genetic variation for resistance to abiotic stress, such as high and low-temperature tolerance at the reproductive stage in rice, the advantage of reduced-tillering gene in wheat grown under terminal drought, the effect of salinity and water-deficit on production of volatile compounds in aromatic rice. In close collaboration with the Australian rice industry, Jaquie currently leads two AgriFutures funded pre-breeding projects aimed to improve lodging resistance, cold tolerance and aerobic adaptation for high water productivity rice. In addition to exploring genetic variation in physiological traits and genomic regions of importance to improved water productivity, genomic tools are under development to improve breeding efficiency for the Riverina. Based at The University of Queensland, School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability, Jaquie provides specialist guidance and assistance to undergraduate and postgraduate research students within crop physiology and agronomy with extensive experience conducting research projects focused on abiotic stress, pre-breeding and rice cropping systems research.

Dr Millicent Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Crop Physiology at The University of Queensland. Her research is focused on understanding the physiological mechanisms that underpin yield stability and quality in grain legumes. Millicent works closely with breeders, both in Australia and overseas, to develop improved knowledge on abiotic stress adaptation and tools to accelerate genetic gain. Dr Smith leads a national research project funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation focused on deploying novel phenotyping and genomics approaches to fast-track the development of new chickpea varieties that display lower yield loss in response to high temperature. Millicent is passionate about training the next generation of plant scientists. She leads a growing research team of postdoctoral scientists, postgraduate and undergraduate research students and has been awarded for her innovative teaching approaches applied to large undergraduate and postgraduate courses.