PAG Asia 2014

May 19 - 21, 2014

Plenary Lecture: Peter Langridge - "Hot, Dry and Salty But Still Growing"

Professor Peter Langridge was awarded a PhD in 1980 from the Australian National University. He worked as a post-doc for four years in Germany with Professor Feix at the University of Freiburg before joining the University of Adelaide in 1984. He became a Professor in 1996 and from 1998 was the inaugural Research Director of the CRC for Molecular Plant Breeding. In 2003. Peter became the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) when it was established. ACPFG is a major research Centre based in Adelaide set up by the Australian Federal Government through the Australian Research Council and the Grains Research and Development Corporation. ACPFG scientists improve cereal crops’ tolerance to environmental stresses such as drought, heat, salinity and nutrient toxicities; major causes of yield and quality loss throughout the world and significant problems for cereal growers. The future resilience of our food production systems in the face of a changing climate will depend upon the development and delivery of new technologies. ACPFG works to create cereal varieties more resistant to drought and saline soils. Peter’s research has focused on plant molecular biology and the science of plant breeding. The most significant contributions have been in developing molecular tools and, more recently, genomics technologies for crop improvement.