Oluwaseun is a PhD candidate at QAAFI, the University of Queensland. He works at the centre for crop science and his PhD project explores how drought affects physiology, morphology, phenology and ultimately reduces the yield of our major food crops, particularly chickpea. Recently, climate change has worsened this situation. Chickpea is significant in Australia's crop system as a disease breaker and nitrogen fixer, and it has global impacts on poor resource farmers. Hence, his PhD work seeks to develop efficient breeding methods to accelerate genetic gains in crop breeding programmes through the development of novel genomic selection approaches using high-throughput genomics and phenomics datasets.
He completed his BSc in Plant Breeding and Seed Technology at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta Nigeria, with a First Class Honour. He obtained his MSc in Plant Breeding and Genetic Resource from Wageningen University and Research (WUR), Netherlands. During his MSc, he worked at WUR on “Physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying high k+ content in quinoa under salt stress” and his second research project at the Institute for Molecular Physiology and Biotechnology of Plant, the University of Bonn German on “Functional study of the CpPTP-1 promoter and the effects of site-directed mutagenesis on its crucial cis-acting regulatory elements in Craterostigma plantagineum”. The Netherlands Fellowship Programme (NFP) and Erasmus plus grant fully funded his MSc.
He started his PhD at Hickey’s Lab in January 2020.
Oluwaseun’s principal advisor is Associate Professor Lee Hickey.
Project title: Understanding the genetics of crop root architecture