Aparna is a PhD student at the ARC Training Centre in Predictive Breeding, working at the Ortiz-Barrientos Lab, and an associate at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant success in Nature and Agriculture. She has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from UAS-B, India and a master’s degree in Plant sciences (specialising in Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources) from WUR, Netherlands.
Her PhD project explores the potential of leveraging local adaptations in mung bean to contribute to climate-resilient crop improvement. Mung bean is an important pulse crop globally, but the production is often impacted by abiotic and biotic stressors. She wants to zoom in to the historic adaptations that mung bean genome went through in the past and leverage that information for improving the crop.
She is curious about the intersection of evolution and agriculture which were stand-alone branches for a long time! Besides having worked on quinoa, tomato, maize and other crops, she has a background in breeding for abiotic-stress tolerance, high-throughput digital phenotyping, genomics, and programming. While working on methodology development for 3D and 2D plant image analysis, she was introduced into the use of multi-omics for understanding and tackling any problem, which she hopes to develop and apply in her PhD. She is passionate about sustainable food production and improving the accessibility of science education. In the future, she hopes to contribute to reducing the impact of climate change through her research on climate-resilient crops.
After work, you can find her unwinding with some tea and a painting palette or outdoors enjoying fresh air and greenery.
