Prof. Jesse A. Poland

Principal Investigator

Professor of Plant Science and Principal Investigator of the Plant Breeding and Genetics Lab

Social Profile:

Biography

Jesse Poland is Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics in the Center for Desert Agriculture at KAUST. He was appointed to the Graduate Faculty in Plant Science, where he serves as Major Professor and Committee Member for students in Plant Genomics, Breeding, and Genetics. Poland is also acting director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Applied Wheat Genomics, with a focus on applying genomics tools to accelerate wheat breeding and developing climate resilient wheat varieties throughout the world.

Research Interests

Poland’s group at KAUST focuses on the formidable questions of how to develop climate resilient crops to address the grand challenges of food security in the coming generations. Poland leads work on important crops including wheat and date palm to better understand the dynamic plant genomes and increasing genetic gain in crop breeding. Looking at the grand challenges facing agriculture, the lab also focuses on species with extreme stress tolerance such as saltgrass (Distichlis spp.) that can grow in salinity at the level of seawater. Neodomestication, breeding, and cultivation of such species could provide a trajectory change for agriculture in the face of hotter climates and rapidly shrinking water reserves.

Selected Publications

Genomic selection for processing and end-use quality traits in the CIMMYT spring bread wheat breeding program, Battenfield, S. D., C. Guzm n, R. C. Gaynor, R. P. Singh, R. J. Pe a, S. Dreisigacker, A. K. Fritz and J. Poland, The Plant Genome, 2016, 9(2).

Multiple wheat genomes reveal global variation in modern breeding, Walkowiak, S., et al., Nature, 2020, 588(7837): p. 277-283.

Development of a complete set of wheat–barley group-7 Robertsonian translocation chromosomes conferring an increased content of β-glucan, Danilova, T. V., Friebe, B., Gill, B. S., Poland, J., & Jackson, E., Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 2018, 131(2), 377–388. 

High-throughput phenotyping with deep learning gives insight into the genetic architecture of flowering time in wheat, Wang, X., H. Xuan, B. Evers, S. Shrestha, R. Pless and J. Poland, GigaScience, 2019, 8(11).

Highthroughput phenotyping enabled genetic dissection of crop lodging in wheat, Singh, D., X. Wang, U. Kumar, L. Gao, M. Noor, M. Imtiaz, R. P. Singh and J. Poland, Frontiers in Plant Science, 2019, 10(394).

Improving grain yield, stress resilience and quality of bread wheat using large-scale genomics, Juliana, P., J. Poland, J. Huerta-Espino, S. Shrestha, J. Crossa, L. Crespo-Herrera, F. H. Toledo, V. Govindan, S. Mondal, U. Kumar, S. Bhavani, P. K. Singh, M. S. Randhawa, X. He, C. Guzman, S. Dreisigacker, M. N. Rouse, Y. Jin, P. P rez-Rodr guez, O. A. Montesinos-L pez, D. Singh, M. M. Rahman, F. Marza and R. P. Singh, Nature Genetics, 2019.

Education

PhD, Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, 2010

MSc, Plant Pathology, Kansas State University, 2004

BSc, Agronomy, Kansas State University, 2003

Professional Profile

2021-present: Professor, KAUST, Saudi Arabia

2013-present: ex situ Director, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Applied Wheat Genomics

2021: Professor, Kansas State University

2017-2021: Associate Professor, Kansas State University

2014-2021: Associate Director, Wheat Genetics Resource Center I/UCRC

2014-2017: Assistant Professor, Kansas State University

2010-2014: Research Geneticist, USDA-ARS, Manhattan, KS

2010-2014: Adjunct Assistant Professor, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS

Scientific and Professional Membership

Crop Science Society of America

Awards

National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) Early Career Scientist Award, Sept 2016

KAUST Affiliations