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Dr Lee Hickey

Principal Research Fellow

Centre for Crop Science
Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
l.hickey@uq.edu.au
+61 7 336 54805

Overview

Dr Lee Hickey is a plant breeder and crop geneticist within the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation at The University of Queensland, Australia. He leads an innovative team conducting discovery and applied research on Australia’s most important cereal crops, wheat and barley. This includes understanding the genetics of key traits like drought adaptation and disease resistance, plus the development of novel technologies to assist plant breeders. He has a strong interest in the integration of leading-edge breeding technologies, such as the rapid generation advance technology ‘speed breeding’ with genomic selection and genome editing. His advice for speed breeding crops is sought internationally and the technology is now adopted by plant breeding programs worldwide, which is fast-tracking development of improved crop varieties for farmers. His research outcomes have featured in 57 refereed publications, including articles in high profile journals Nature Plants, Nature Protocols and Nature Biotechnology. Lee is a prolific science communicator and his research outcomes have appeared in mainstream media such as BBC World News, National Geographic, and the New York Times. He is passionate about training the next generation of plant breeders and currently mentors 10 PhD students, while 9 of his previous graduates now work for leading plant breeding companies and high-profile research institutes around the globe.

Check out the Hickey Lab website here

Follow Dr Hickey on Twitter: @DrHikov

Research interests

  • Understanding genetic resistance to pathogens that attack wheat and barley
  • Speed breeding techniques to reduce the length of breeding cycles
  • Understanding the genetics of drought adaptive traits and their value in different environments
  • Integration of breeding technologies to accelerate genetic gain in breeding programs
  • Innovative genomic selection breeding methodologies

Research Impacts

Farming in 2030

Dr Lee Hickey's version of 2030 features robots, drones and intelligent machines as common place on farms, helping to reduce labour costs and chemical use. Listen to Dr Hickey discussing the future of farming.

Ancient genes to protect modern wheat

First genetic analysis of wheat landraces from the Vavilov seed bank in St Petersburg, Russia. Listen to the ABC Radio interview here.

Digging deep to drought-proof Australian barley

Discovery of a major gene influencing narrow root growth that may be useful for improving drought adaptation of barley crops. Full story here.

Barley Armed with Rust Defence

A three year international collaborative research project headed by the University of Queensland has led to the discovery of a gene to protect barley crops against the fungal disease, leaf rust, which will allow breedeers to arm barley with a genetic defence against the disease. Read more in this article from Queensland Country Life.

Speed Breeding to Develop Rust-Proof Wheat

Researchers at the University of Queensland used "speed breeding" techniques to dramatically reduce the time required to introduce new genes into an existing crop variety. The technique of growing plants under constant light was inspired by NASA who were intending to grow wheat on long space missions. Listen to the ABC radio interview.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Agricultural Science with Honours Clas, The University of Queensland
  • Graduate Certificate in Research Commercialisation, The University of Queensland
  • Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Queensland

Publications

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Grants

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Supervision

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Publications

Book Chapter

  • “SpeedGS” to accelerate genetic gain in spring wheat

    Voss-Fels, Kai P., Herzog, Eva, Dreisigacker, Susanne, Sukumaran, Sivakumar, Watson, Amy, Frisch, Matthias, Hayes, Ben and Hickey, Lee T. (2019). “SpeedGS” to accelerate genetic gain in spring wheat. In Thomas Miedaner and Viktor Korzun (Ed.), Applications of genetic and genomic research in cereals (pp. 303-327) Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-102163-7.00014-4

  • Rapid phenotyping adult plant resistance to stem rust in wheat grown under controlled conditions

    Riaz, Adnan and Hickey, Lee T. (2017). Rapid phenotyping adult plant resistance to stem rust in wheat grown under controlled conditions. In Sambasivam Periyannan (Ed.), Wheat rust diseases: methods and protocols (pp. 183-196) New York, NY, United States: Humana Press. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-7249-4_16

  • Toward more effective discovery and deployment of novel plant genetic variation: reflection and future directions

    Mackay, M. C., Street, K. A. and Hickey, L. T. (2016). Toward more effective discovery and deployment of novel plant genetic variation: reflection and future directions. In Abdallah Bari, Ardeshir B. Damania, Michael Mackay and Selvadurai Dayanandan (Ed.), Applied mathematics and omics to assess crop genetic resources for climate change adaptive traits (pp. 139-150) Boca Raton, FL, United States: Taylor & Francis Group. doi:10.1201/b19518-16

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Other Outputs

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

Completed Supervision

This staff member is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

Wheat breeding, Barley breeding, Wheat disease resistance, Barley disease, Wheat genetics, Barley genetics

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

Links

ORCID: 0000-0001-6909-7101

Scopus ID: 26428733700

Personal Profile: Link

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