HORSHAM grain researcher Surya Kant’s can-do attitude has earned him this year’s Wheat Research Foundation award.
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The annual award recognises an Agriculture Victoria Horsham staff member demonstrating outstanding achievement above and beyond expected work outcomes.
Dr Kant, who has previously study and worked in Canada, Israel and India, started work at Grains Innovation Park in 2011.
He has played a leading role in setting up Victoria’s fist high-throughput plant phenomics centre.
Plant Phenomics Victoria, located at the Grains Innovation Park in Horsham, represents the most advanced plant phenomics capability in Australia.
It allows for non-destructive, accurate, whole-of-life-cycle, quantitative measurements of plant growth and development, supporting research in grains, horticulture and forages to advance productivity and biosecurity outcomes for plant and animal industries.
The centre was opened in early 2016, and has been host to more than 50 tour groups.
Dr Kant has also worked on projects involving nitrogen use efficiency in plants, water use efficiency in plants and looked at how plants respond to increase carbon dioxide levels.
Dr Kant and his team have successfully tested traits for water use efficiency, salinity tolerance, boron tolerance and higher biomass and yield for crops such as wheat, lentil, chickpea, field pea, canola and ryegrass.
But Dr Kant’s work extends beyond the high-tech glasshouse and into the field, where he has conceptualised, designed and supervised the installation of rainout shelters for well-defined water stress field phenotyping of crop plants. A research article about the design, application and use of rainout shelters was recently published in the journal Crop Science USA.
Dr Kant said winning the Wheat Research Foundation award was a great honour and privileged.
“A big thank-you must to go the whole team – everyone has been really helpful and supportive,” he said.
Wheat Research Foundation chairman John Ackland paid tribute to Dr Kant.
“Surya has consistently displayed a combination of energy, hard work, scientific rigour and teamwork to produce an exceptional track record,” he said.
“He has built a high calibre team, has worked with engineers to develop equipment for in-field imaging, and promotes a culture of ‘can-do enterprise’.”
Dr Kant received a wooden trophy and $1500 for the award.
The Victorian Wheat Research Foundation originally developed a centre in the late 1960s at the current Grains Innovation Park site. .