About me
Professor Chengdao Li has focused on developing new breeding technologies and integrating them to produce commercial barley varieties. He led the world’s trend of transitioning from conventional breeding technologies to utilising doubled haploids, molecular selection, genomic breeding and gene-editing. He is an international leader in the consortia to decode the barley reference genome and to develop a pan genome, establishing the foundation for current genomic-based breeding. Professor Li’s team has bred and commercialized important barley varieties. Baudin set the world benchmark for malting quality. These varieties increased yield and price premiums, boosting growers’ income and transforming Australia from a low-price commodity provider to a premium barley supplier internationally. Prof Li’s team continues to further develop efficient DNA fingerprinting technology to service the industry and secure the whole supply chain integrity.
Professor Li leads his team to tackle some of the most important agricultural issues. Pre-harvest sprouting has resulted in tens of millions of dollars in economic losses for the barley industry. His team responded by developing an efficacious genetic solution to eliminate this grain defect for the barley industry. Another key factor limiting barley production is the fact that over 70% of the Western Australia grain belt has acidic soil. Professor Li is a pioneer in identifying germplasm tolerant to acidic conditions and the acidic soil tolerant genes used to breed the variety Litmus. His recent efforts focus on developing new crops to adapt to climate changes.
As Director of the Western Crop Genetics Alliance, Professor Li has extended his expertise and breeding technologies from barley to other crops including oats, lupin, chickpea and wheat