Allan Feurtado is the Team Lead of Integrated Omics and Climate Resilience at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). Growing up in Ontario, he developed an interest in plants and crops that led him to study at Queen’s University, the University of Guelph and then Simon Fraser University. His research focused on seed dormancy and germination, which eventually brought him to the Prairies and his current role at the NRC.
Where did you work before the NRC?
I first came to the NRC in Saskatoon as a PhD student through Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. What was originally meant to be a one-year visit, to work with specialists in plant hormone research, turned into the place where I completed my PhD. After my PhD, I stayed at the NRC in a postdoctoral research associate role, working on seed maturation and germination. Over time, I became interested in abiotic stress, because of the parallels with events in seed development and maturation. This eventually led to my current position as team lead and research officer with the NRC’s Aquatic and Crop Resource Development Research Centre.
What got you interested in your current area of work?
My interest in plant roots stemmed from our discovery that the root system plays a significant role in wheat lodging resistance in our Prairie environments. Root biology had always interested me and its connection to lodging issues faced by farmers renewed my interest to develop a project centred on root system architecture – the shape and spatial arrangement of root systems. The second priority was figuring out the best way to look at roots. That’s where my interest in photography and imaging came in. I started thinking about how we could best use imaging technology and analysis to gain better insight into the root system diversity of our crops, and that’s also when I teamed up with root researcher Leon Kochian at the University of Saskatchewan.
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