Beef City visit for new Vegetable research leader
Published on 16 March, 2010
CQUniversity's new Professor of Horticultural Science Phil Brown has visited Rockhampton Campus to meet Centre for Plant and Water Science staff members and postgraduate students.
Professor Brown is based at Bundaberg, where he has a dual role with the University and with Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries (QPI&F) as Research Leader, Vegetable Crop Science. Professor Brown will work with QPI&F staff on research, development and extension programs aimed at increasing the productivity and ensuring sustainability of the vegetable industry in the Bundaberg region.
The new appointee plans to encourage more staff and student activity on projects in the Bundaberg region, which is one of Queensland's premier horticultural production zones. Collaboration with QPI&F staff and local industry representatives, and access to facilities at both the University's Bundaberg Campus and QPI&F Bundaberg research station, will provide exciting opportunities for postgraduate students and researchers. The planned research program will also utilise the expertise and facilities of the Centre for Plant and Water Science based at the Rockhampton Campus, and will improve the Centre's capacity to engage with the horticultural sector in the region.
Professor Brown has spent most of his career at the University of Tasmania, but is no stranger to CQU having spent 2 years at Rockhampton Campus in the early 1990s as a postdoctoral researcher.
Currently completing an ARC Linkage project, Using Molecular Tools for Understanding, Predicting and Managing Flowering in Brassica* Crops, and supervising students working on a range of other cold climate vegetable crops, Phil is looking forward to working with a new set of vegetable crops.
He will have a wide-ranging brief in Bundaberg but is sure he will be involved in developments with capsicum, chilli, tomato and sweet potato crops, to name a few. Phil will also be active in promoting the discipline of horticultural science as immediate past President of the Australian Society for Horticultural Science.
Phil meets some of his Rockampton Campus colleagues at a 'welcome' morning tea * The brassica family includes: broccoli, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, collard greens, pak choi and kohlrabi.