The Adaptive Evolution Lab

Australia is a megadiverse country and hosts a large amount of plants with immense potential benefits for medicine and agriculture. Unfortunately, native fruits have rarely being considered as crops and their potential remains largely untapped. With emerging genome technology, we aim to fill the gap so that native fruits can represent a sustainable alternative to conventional crops.

The emergence of resistance to pesticide is evolution in action. Weed populations in Australia have been particularly good at emerging resistance to all the chemical they have been exposed to, providing a fascinating model for the study of evolution to a well-defined selective agent.

Active population management will be increasingly indispensable to mitigate the effect of human perturbation. However, the perfect management scheme, either to restore or control a species, is yet to be designed. We are interested in using genomics tools to make sure the management goals will be met, retaining a maximum of genetic diversity and climate change-proof.