Rate My Professor Lynette Brownfield

Lynette Brownfield is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Otago, within the School of Biomedical Sciences and Faculty of Biomedical Sciences. She holds a BSc (Hons) and a PhD. Her research specializes in plant biochemistry, focusing on plant sexual reproduction. Specific areas include male gametophyte (pollen) and sperm cell development in flowering plants, plant male meiosis and the formation of unreduced gametes, and the specification of the male germ line in Arabidopsis thaliana. She employs genetic and molecular tools to advance understanding in these fields, with implications for crop domestication and breeding, particularly in species like perennial ryegrass and wheat.

Brownfield's career at the University of Otago has produced impactful publications. Notable works include Herridge et al. (2026) "A new breeding technique for F1 hybrid production from self-incompatible species" in Plant Biotechnology Journal; Adhikari et al. (2023) "Discovery of a cis-regulatory element SaeM involved in dynamic regulation of synergid-specific MYB98" in Frontiers in Plant Science; and Harris et al. (2023) "Assessing inbreeding in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) as a step towards F1 hybrid breeding" in Plant Breeding. Other contributions encompass studies on cytoplasmic male sterility in wheat and mechanisms of DUF247 proteins in ryegrass self-incompatibility. Her scholarship is evidenced by over 2,855 citations on Google Scholar, where she is affiliated with plant reproduction research.

In addition to her research, Brownfield excels in supervision and knowledge translation. She received the Otago University Students' Association Supervisor of the Year Award for the Division of Health Sciences in 2025 and the School of Biomedical Sciences Commercialisation Researcher award in 2024. Students under her guidance have won accolades, including the 2016 Department of Biochemistry Best Student Paper (1st place) for "A cis-regulatory module in the transcription factor DUO1 promoter" and the 2015 New Zealand Society of Plant Biologists Best Student Presentation (1st place) by Ben Peters at ComBio. She presented a keynote titled "Plant reproduction: The key to crop domestication" at the Genetics Otago Annual Symposium & Workshops in 2023. Brownfield also serves as Secretary of the New Zealand Society of Plant Biologists.