Elizabeth Aitken
Professor
School of Agriculture and Food Sciences
The University of Queensland
Australia
Biography
Associate Professor Elizabeth Aitken (Liz) obtained her BSc Hons in Agricultural Science (Crop Science) from Edinburgh University where she specialised in Plant Pathology. She then went on to undertake her PhD studies at Aberdeen University in conjunction with the UK Forestry Commission on a study of dieback on Scots pine trees. This was followed with postdoctoral studies at Birmingham University and the Sainsbury Lab, aiming to identify a rust resistance gene by transposon tagging. In 1993 she moved to Australia and joined UQ as an academic staff member.
Research Interest
Research topics have included the genetics of plant-pathogen interactions, molecular aspects of pathogenicity and disease diagnostics. This work has assisted in the identification of disease incursions in particular in banana and of cryptic plant pathogen species of Pythium in ginger and Phomopsis in sunflower. One current research focus includes identification of resistance to Fusarium wilt in diploid banana lines for potential deployment against TR4 in commercial banana cultivars; this is now funded by the BMGF in collaboration with the International Institute of Topical Agriculture in Africa.
Publications
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Adnan R, Naveenkumar A, Sambasivam P, Olga A, Olga M, et al. (2017) Mining Vavilov’s treasure chest of wheat diversity for adult plant resistance to Puccinia triticina. Plant Disease 2: 317-323.
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Phu LD, Mike SK, Elizabeth AAB (2017) Species delimitation in Pythium species complexes: the case of Pythium myriotylum Drechsler and Pythium zingiberis Takahashi. Mycological Progress 3: 257-267.
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Kelly LA, Tan YP, Ryley MJ, Aitken EAB (2017) Fusarium species associated with stalk rot and head blight of grain sorghum in Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. Plant Pathology.
