Dr Margaret Wallace was appointed as Senior Technical Manager for DUS (Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability) Testing and Seed Certification of Agricultural Crops in January 2018. In addition to the core services delivered to APHA (Animal Plant Health Agency) and Defra, Margaret has been selected to represent the UK interests at the UPOV Technical Working Party for Agricultural Crops (UPOV TWA) and the UPOV Technical Group on Biochemical and Molecular Techniques, and DNA-profiling in particular (UPOV BMT).
Margaret joined NIAB in March 2013 as the Technical Manager for DUS Testing of cereals, field beans and fodder kale. Prior to that, Margaret’s experience in herbage DUS testing gave the ideal background for her PhD at Queens University Belfast, assessing the cytoplasmic relationships between Lolium cultivars.
Margaret is a fully trained seed crop inspector for UK agricultural species and delivers the training for crop inspectors (new and established) across all species groups (Herbage, Pulses, Cereals, Oilseeds and miscellaneous). She also provides barley variety grain identification training to commercial clients including those from the malting industry.
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