Dr Lucy Egan commenced as a Post Doctoral Fellow in the CSIRO Cotton Breeding Group in 2020 to work on a project to further develop cotton germplasm with increased host plant resistance to pests and disease.

Lucy has established herself as an excellent collaborator and has shown great creativity and innovation with her development of new Verticillium Wilt assays under controlled conditions. She has also been involved in cutting edge phenomics technology to quantify disease symptoms which will help underpin the selection of material cultivars for resistance in breeding lines.

Lucy’s successfully demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of SARDI’s quantification methodology for Vertillicium wilt and how it can be applied to the cotton industry.