Dr Anton Wasson

Dr Anton Wasson’s background in plant physiology has led him into diverse interdisciplinary projects at CSIRO Agriculture & Food. He specializes in plant phenotyping/sensing, root architecture, and water and nutrient use efficiency. Recent work has focused on improving research adoption into farming systems, including managing a biologicals partnership and accelerating uptake of trait knowledge into breeding programs. He currently leads CSIRO’s CarbonLock project on Microbially accelerating enhanced rock weathering (ERW) for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and the GRDC-funded AcceleTraitPlus project on crop performance prediction with UAV hyperspectral imagery. He leads CSIRO’s Functional Soil Biology capability team.

Dr Anton Wasson was a member of CSIRO’s Ag2050 project team; led the GRDC funded Molecular markers for root hair traits and enhanced phosphorus use efficiency (PUE) in wheat, which aimed to identify genes and traits in wheat that can reduce the amount of non-renewable phosphorus fertilizer that farmers have to apply to optimize the yield; and was a PDF on CSIRO’s Root Phenotyping Project which developed cutting-edge field-based facilities to measure root performance and root architecture in the field.

In 2009 Dr Wasson completed a Doctor of Philosophy at the Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Australian Capital Territory. Dr Wasson completed a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in 2005 and a Bachelor of Law (Honours) at the same institution in 2006. His Doctorate focused on the role of plant flavonoids in regulating phytohormone activities in root development.