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Irene Hwang

Scientist, Bayer

Expert Bio

As a scientist at Bayer, Irene is responsible for evaluation, development and improvement of plant transformation systems. Prior to joining Bayer, she worked on fungal and plant transformation for a variety of crops. At Novartis, she increased watermelon and squash daily transformation capacity by redesigning a method to efficiently remove the seed coat and developed and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system for commercial watermelon lines. At Syngenta, she constructed binary vectors, improved maize immature embryo transformation efficiency and developed a proprietary soybean transformation protocol. As a group leader at Agarigen, which was acquired by Intrexon later on, she developed a high throughput mushroom transformation system and led the effort of producing thousands of transgenic mushrooms.

Irene received her Bachelor of Science from National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan, and Ph.D. in Biological Science from Kyushu University, Japan, focusing on breeding of flowers.

Studies, Articles and Answers

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Question

Q: how plant breeding technologies have affected variation in major food crops?

Answered By Irene Hwang - Apr 03, 2018

A: Plant breeding technologies have systematically increased variation in major food crops by using a variety of scientific tools, such as crossing, mutation, genetics and statistics. Take corn, the most produced grain in the world, as an example. Numerous varieties of field corn, sweet corn and popcorn have been developed through plant breeding technologies. From hundreds of varieties, farmers choose the best ones suited for their soils, climates and cultivation systems to grow in their areas. [...]

Answered By Community Manager - Apr 03, 2018

A: For more information on plant breeding techniques we invite you to check out the below similar questions that have been answered before. Kevin Folta, Professor and Chairman, Horticultural Sciences Department, University of Florida, discusses the cross-pollination and reproduction of plants in this response. A snippet is included below. “A species is defined by the ability to reproduce viable offspring, so any two plants within a species generally have the potential to cross pollinate. Like any good successful mating, it requires the union of male and female contributions at the right [...]

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