Research highlights - Dr Lee Hickey

Dr Lee Hickey works closely with other leaders in the plant breeding industry to increase the efficiency of crop improvement programs. A powerful breeding tool that he often applies in his research program is called “speed breeding”, which was developed by UQ researchers in the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences (SAFS) more than a decade ago. He applies speed breeding in temperature-controlled glasshouses fitted with the latest LED lighting systems to extend the photoperiod and promote early flowering. This enables growing up to six generations per year of crops like wheat, barley and chickpea per year, instead of just two to three in a regular glasshouse.

In 2019, for the first time, Lee has successfully adapted the technique to tropical short-day crops, such as millet, sorghum and pigeon pea. This important development could help fast-track breeding of these crops in Australia, and also in developing nations. Lee’s research forms part of a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lee and his research group at QAAFI have also been working on fusing speed breeding with other technologies, such as genome editing. Genome editing is the process through which the sequence of single genes can be edited to improve plant traits like disease and drought tolerance. This process is time-consuming, taking upwards of 9 months in the lab. The combination of genome editing and speed breeding would be incredibly beneficial, as it would enable this process to be shortened significantly, which would be of great value to the plant breeding industry. Recently, the team has successfully created barley plants incorporating the Cas9 gene and are currently working on evaluating novel delivery systems to perform genome editing directly in the speed breeding glasshouse instead of the lab.  

Dr Hickey received a UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award in 2019 for his valuable research and leadership in his field. For more information about his work in the St Lucia Glasshouses, have a look at this short video. Central Glasshouse Services look forward to continuing to support Lee’s exciting research in 2020.