Dr. Jaswinder Singh is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Science, McGill University, Canada. Dr. Singh received his PhD from the University of Sydney and CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra Australia and did his postdoctoral studies at the University of California Berkeley, U.S.A. His research focuses on the enhancement of quality traits, stress tolerance and bioenergy capability of crop plants using modern genomic, molecular breeding and biotechnological tools. Dr. Singh is an internationally recognized innovator in the use of transposon tagging in cereal crops. His findings have shown for the first time the reversal of epigenetic silencing in plants. Recently, his laboratory discovered a key gene that acts as a switch to determine how a particular plant responds to high humidity and excess rainfall. The research opens up a new epigenetic-based direction for exploration of seed dormancy and Pre Harvest Sprouting (PHS). He has delivered numerous talks in international meetings and prestigious institutes. He has published over 40 research articles in high impact peer reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings. Additionally, he is actively involved in teaching plant breeding, plant biotechnology, plant biology courses, training graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and lab assistants. To date, he has trained over 40 researchers, which include undergraduate, technicians, graduate students and PDFs. He is also performing his duties as an editor for two international journals (Canadian Journal of Plant Science, PLOS ONE) and a reviewer for numerous granting agencies. He is honored to serve as panel member for various national and international funding organizations including US Department of Energy and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. He has served as Eastern Director of Canadian Society of Agronomy (2010-2012), executive member of International Committee of the American Society of Plant Biologists (2012-15) and executive committee member of International Association of Plant Biotechnology- Canada (2013-2014). He is currently serving as a member of Gleb Krotkov award committee of the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists. In addition, he has successfully co-chaired two prestigious conferences (Canadian Plant Biotechnology -2014 and CSA-CSHS -2016) in Montreal.

With global climate changes, crop tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses like heat, drought, salt, water logging, and freezing will become even more critical for future food security worldwide. In order to offset its detrimental effects on crop yields and meet the growing demand for food and feed, it is imperative to develop crops with improved tolerance. In the face of diminishing useable land and water resources, the challenge then is to continue providing sufficient food in an environmentally sustainable manner for the rapidly expanding world population that is expected to reach over 9 billion by the year 2050. Conventional plant breeding programs alone will clearly not be enough to overcome the colossal dual obstacles of climate change and ensuring global food security: Species survival and enhancement depends on genetic diversity, which allows them to cope with changing biotic and abiotic conditions. Yet, as plant breeders in the past focused their efforts on improving qualities such as uniformity and yield, other important genes fundamental to future survival were unintentionally lost; for example, disease and pest resistance genes. Consequently, in recent years, it has become apparent that important agricultural crops such as wheat, barley, rice and maize are becoming increasingly more susceptible not only to pests and diseases, but also to many other abiotic or biotic stresses as a direct result of this narrowing of genetic diversity. In contrast, the scientific community commonly accepts that many of the genes and alleles considered to be important in a crop - those for disease and pest tolerance, adaptability, yield, and drought/flooding tolerance for instance- should theoretically be found in the wild ancestors of cultivated crops, making the wild species an incontrovertible primary source of genetic material. Despite this fact, all modern genomic efforts have been concentrated solely on the lost realm of cultivated species. Notwithstanding, we strongly believe that advanced tools should be applied to more relevant sources where unique genes actually exist; therefore it is the wild ancestors of our modern crops rather than currently grown cultivars that deserve such exploitation. Our work lay the foundation for unique methods of identify genes from wild and cultivated species for use in cereals improvement. In essence, we are creating plant-version of the fruit-fly by transforming barley and oat varieties with a special “jumping gene” called a transposon. Once introduced, this transposon is programmed to jump in and out of other genes, turning them on or off. We then grow many versions of these experimental genetic lines, observing what happens when different genes are turned on or off. When something interesting happens (e.g. improved lodging resistance) we will then identify the gene that caused this change by looking for the location of the transposon – much like a bookmark in a large novel. The transposon-tagged varieties do not need to be used directly in cereals improvement: they will simply tell us what to look for in the germplasm where better versions of the genes may already be available.