Academic and Professional Background

• Background:

  BSc (Hons 1)

  PhD

• Personal Resume:

  Dr Mary Christey is a senior scientist interested in the application of biotechnology to crop improvement, especially in vegetable and forage brassicas.
  
  Her research includes tissue culture-based techniques that enable the transfer of traits between plants not possible by conventional breeding.
  
  Traits of interest include reduced post-harvest senescence, pest and disease resistance, improved nutritional profile, and abiotic stress tolerance.
  
  Mary's current research is aimed at decreasing insecticide use through the production of vegetable and forage brassicas resistant to attack from cabbage white butterfly and diamond-back moth caterpillars.
  
  She has a field trial in progress monitoring the caterpillar resistance and non-target impacts of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and forage kale with insecticidal genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Other current research projects include the use of molecular markers in brassicas for cultivar identification and marker-assisted selection and embryo rescue to enable the production of hybrids between radish and kale.