Farrer Medal awarded at Narrabri assembly

A distinguished career in wheat genome research has seen Professor Rudi Appels honoured with the Farrer Medal.

Prof Appels delivered his Farrer Medal oration, and officially received the honour, at the recent Wheat Breeding Assembly held in Narrabri.

He presented his oration ‘The Wheat Plant and its Genome’ to a large crowd assembled at the University of Sydney Plant Breeding Institute.

Prof Appels’ career initially began in animal biology.

In 1977 all of that changed when he and former CSIRO plant researcher and 1999 Farrer Memorial Medal recipient Jim Peacock first isolated wheat DNA.

“From that moment on, I never looked back,” Prof Appels said.

The award-winning Melbourne resident went on to enjoy a 27-year plant industry research career with CSIRO, and a further 17 years at Murdoch University which included activity on chromosome structure and function in avian red blood cells, drosophila, subclover, barley, rye and wheat.

Prof Appels said the crown jewel in his long career had to be his contribution to the wheat genome sequence project where he, along with many others, helped create a
roadmap of wheat DNA.

“Now we can see where we’re going (in the DNA structure) and can, for instance, locate a specific chromosome to find the important bits,” Prof Appels said.

The Farrer Medal is awarded annually to perpetuate the memory of William James Farrer, a leading Australian agronomist and plant breeder.

Farrer is known as the originator of the ‘Federation’ strain of wheat in 1903.

Prof Appel’s oration at the Narrabri dinner touched on Farrer’s agricultural research achievements