Rajeev Varshney is an agricultural research scientist specializing in genomics and molecular breeding in international agriculture while working in Australia, Germany, India, Mexico and several countries in Africa.
Rajeev has made centrally important contributions to understanding genomic variation in legume crops and applying his discoveries to improve the productivity of major 'orphan' tropical crops including chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut. He has established and led international programmes that use genomic variation to breed new crop varieties for Asian and sub-Sahara African farmers that are more nutritious and can tolerate drought and pests more effectively.
Rajeev's research group, at present, is working on improving wheat, legume and horticultural crops for agronomic, and abiotic stress tolerance traits by developing and deploying novel genomics approaches such as pangenomics, haplotype cataloguing and functional genomics approaches.
Rajeev is an elected fellow to >10 science/agriculture academies/societies in India, Germany, USA, Africa. His research work has been recognized with >30 prestigious awards including topmost awards- Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award from India, and International Crop Science Award from USA.
Professional position
- Director, Centre for Crop and Food Innovation, Murdoch University
- Director, Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Murdoch University
- International Chair in Agriculture and Food Security, Food Futures Institute, Murdoch University
Subject groups
- Organismal biology, evolution and ecology
Agricultural and forest science, Population genetics, Plant sciences / botany
