Lumen Winter 2018 - Flipbook - Page 14
CAITLIN’S
QUEST TO
STRENGTHEN
OUR FUTURE
FOOD SUPPLY
STORY BY KELLY BROWN
As our climate changes, Dr Caitlin Byrt’s
research will help secure Australia’s
future food supply by improving the
productivity of vital crops.
As a child, Caitlin Byrt dreamed of living as
a hermit in the middle of nowhere, so she
could be entirely in touch with nature. These
days she uses her knowledge of nature to
play a part in ensuring current and future
generations have access to good quality
fresh food.
An alumna and senior researcher in plant
biology at the University of Adelaide, Caitlin
studies processes in a plant’s biology to help
determine how to boost crop productivity.
This began during her PhD studies, when
she was part of a project team that identified
a gene in wild varieties of wheat that
contributes to the plant’s tolerance to salt.
“Water limitation and soil salinity are
two of the major problems limiting crops’
yields,” she said.
“For us to feed our growing population,
we must develop crop varieties that remain
productive in stressful conditions where
water is relatively limited, and in areas
where soils are affected by salinity.
12
The University of Adelaide
“The project achieved a 25 per cent increase
in durum wheat grain yield in saline soils,
and the traits and genes were distributed to
more than 18 countries.”
Caitlin has received several accolades
for her work, including the University of
Adelaide Edith Dornwell Medal for EarlyCareer Research Excellence (2014) and the
Australian Research Council Discovery Early
Career Researcher Award (2015). She also
received an Australian Institute of Policy and
Science SA Young Tall Poppy Award in 2015
and, most recently, an Australian Society of
Plant Scientists Goldacre Award for 2018.
and traits we need to borrow from these
stress-tolerant plants and introduce into
our favourite crop plants, like barley, so that
they too can remain productive in these
conditions,” she said.
As part of the project, Caitlin recently
travelled to Scotland to work with a team
at the James Hutton Institute. Together
with this team and local Grains Research
and Development Corporation funded
researchers, they have identified a gene in
barley that influences the amount of salt
that accumulates in the seed and leaves
in saline conditions.
Last year she won a category of the
Australian Government’s Science and
Innovation Award for Young People in
Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry,
which is helping to support a current
project examining the wild relatives of
barley crops to establish what makes
them tolerant to stress.
Caitlin was drawn to studying the
productivity of crop varieties under stressful
conditions during her honours year when
she met Professor Mark Tester, who now
leads a world-renowned program of research
focused on improving plant tolerance at
King Abdullah University of Science and
Technology in Saudi Arabia.
“In this project we have identified strategies
to figure out how we can resolve what genes
“Mark told me about his friend and
colleague at the CSIRO, Dr Rana Munns,
