Daniel Tolhurst

Edinburgh Innovations Fellow

Research at the Highlander Lab

Disentangling genotype by environment (GxE) interaction for selection in breeding programmes at a global scale.

Main goals

  • Novel approaches to exclusively partition GxE interaction into components reflecting changes in scale across environments and changes in rank
  • Efficient selection indices for improving the performance and stability of a population amid climate change
  • Integrating known and latent environmental information to improve the adaptability of individuals in future environments
  • Scaleable sampling schemes for fitting complex GxE models to global breeding data in real-time
Daniel Tolhurst

Background

I am an inaugural Edinburgh Innovations Fellow placed at The Roslin Institute for my project selGxE: Scoping, Estimating and Leveraging genotype by environment interaction in breeding programmes. I am a trained biometrician turned quantitative geneticist working to leverage both fields for improving the efficiency of breeding.

I completed my PhD here at The Roslin Institute titled "Genomic prediction models, selection tools and association studies for genotype by environment data"

Prior to moving to Edinburgh, I held a research position at the University of Wollongong, Australia, with major projects for the Australian Grains Industry and Department of Primary Industries/Fisheries.

Specific Interests

  • Linear mixed models
  • Variance parameter estimation
  • Partitioning genetic variation
  • Hybrid breeding
  • Experimental design                                                            

Programming language and software

  • R and RStudio
  • LaTeX
  • knitr
  • R Shiny

Relevant Links

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