Dr Samir Alahmad is an early career plant breeder and geneticist. His main interest is dissecting the genetics of complex traits that contribute to enhanced yield under drought and disease stresses. His research is focused on better understanding the genetics of drought adaptive traits such as root system architecture and canopy development. He is currently working on two GRDC funded projects that aim to develop elite bread and durum wheat varieties with optimal root system architecture for yield improvement.

Researcher biography

Dr Samir Alahmad is an early career plant breeder, geneticist and plant physiologist within the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation at the University of Queensland. He graduated with a PhD degree in 2019 from the University of Queensland. His main focus is dissecting the genetics of complex traits that contribute to enhanced yield. In particular, his research is focused on better understanding the genetics of drought adaptive traits such as root system architecture and canopy development. He worked on two GRDC-funded projects that aimed to develop elite durum and bread wheat varieties with optimal root system architecture for improved yield. Dr Alahmad also focuses on integrating breeding technologies and high throughput UAV remote sensing technologies to better understand crop response to drought stress. His primary focus is to understand how spectral reflectance indices can be used to speed up the development of new resilient varieties with enhanced genetic gain. Dr Alahmad's interests are quantitative genetics, population genetics, genomic selection, machine learning, and UAV phenotyping.