Reinventing plants for future agriculture

Agriculture and food production face challenges from changing consumer and community expectations, climate change and the impact of new technology.  

Robert Henry will use examples of his recent work to explore how we might re-invert plants to cope with the changing requirement of agriculture in the future.  

Examples will include use of sugarcane for a diversified range of products, new types of horticultural crops and development of crop varieties for production in northern Australia.

Professor Robert Henry 
Director, QAAFI

Professor Robert Henry conducts research on the development of new products from plants. He is Professor of Innovation in Agriculture and Foundation Director of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), a Research Institute of the University of Queensland established in collaboration with the Queensland Government. His current research targets plant genome sequencing for the capture of novel genetic resources for diversification of food crops to deliver improved food products.

He is a graduate of the University of Queensland (B Sc (Hons)), Macquarie University (M Sc (Hons)) and La Trobe University (Ph D). He was awarded a higher doctorate (D Sc) by the University of Queensland for his work on variation in plants, is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and a recipient of the Guthrie Medal for his contributions to cereal chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Robert Henry was foundation senior editor of the Plant Biotechnology Journal. He is a highly cited scientist (ISI) in agriculture.