Rate My Professor Karine Chenu

Professor Karine Chenu is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) at the University of Queensland in the Agriculture faculty. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy and a Masters of Science (Coursework) from Montpellier 2 University. As the University of Queensland representative on the APSIM Initiative Reference Panel, she contributes to the ongoing development of the APSIM crop simulation model. Chenu's career at UQ involves leading research in crop ecophysiology, genetics, and modelling to support plant design and breeding strategies, particularly for winter cereals.

Her research focuses on understanding the physiology and genetics of plant traits under abiotic stresses such as drought, heat, and frost, with applications to wheat, barley, chickpea, and other crops in changing climates. Chenu develops gene-to-phenotype crop models, characterizes environments through drought and water-stress patterns, and explores genotype-by-environment-management interactions to improve productivity and adaptation. She collaborates with national and international teams of breeders, geneticists, modellers, and agronomists in public and private sectors. Notable contributions include phenotyping strategies for root traits, stay-green traits, and transpiration efficiency, as well as projections of climate impacts on crop phenology and yield. Chenu supervises PhD projects on topics including root plasticity for drought tolerance, post-flowering heat stress effects on wheat yield components, and envirotyping for genotype-environment interactions.

Key publications encompass over 300 works, including highly cited papers such as 'Contribution of crop models to adaptation in wheat' (Trends in Plant Science, 2017), 'Large-scale characterization of drought pattern: a continent-wide modelling approach applied to the Australian wheatbelt' (New Phytologist, 2013), 'Environment characterization as an aid to wheat improvement' (Journal of Experimental Botany, 2011), 'The shifting influence of drought and heat stress for crops in northeast Australia' (Global Change Biology, 2015), and recent reviews like 'Crop traits and production under drought' (Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2024). Her work has advanced crop modelling and breeding for resilience in Australian and global agriculture.