Rate My Professor Wendy Vance

Wendy Vance serves as Senior Lecturer and Academic Chair of Crop and Pasture Science in the School of Agricultural Sciences at Murdoch University. Holding a PhD in Environmental Science from Murdoch University (2013), a Master of Agricultural Science, Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Systems, and Bachelor of Agricultural Science, she brings over 20 years of research experience to her role. Her research specializes in developing and translating techniques to overcome abiotic constraints to crop production, such as soil physical constraints, soil acidity impacting legumes, crop physiology, agronomy, and conservation agriculture systems. She has led and contributed to projects funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) in Bangladesh, Laos PDR, and Cambodia, as well as the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) across Western Australia and eastern states, focusing on enhancing farmer livelihoods through crop diversification and sustainable intensification.

Since 2011, Vance has taught undergraduate courses at Murdoch University in soil science, soil management for plant growth, crop agronomy, and crop physiology within the crop and pasture science, animal science, and environmental management majors. Her PhD thesis, titled "Overcoming soil water constraints to chickpea yield in rainfed Mediterranean-type environments," was field-based in Bangladesh. Notable publications include "Novel Sources of Tolerance to Aluminium Toxicity in Wild Cicer (Cicer reticulatum and Cicer echinospermum) Collections" (2021), "Variation of Cicer Germplasm to Manganese Toxicity Tolerance" (2020), "Conservation agriculture effects on yield and profitability of rice-based systems in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain" (2022), "Reversing negative nitrogen balances in intensive rice-based cropping with Conservation Agriculture" (2025), and "Large scale genome-wide association analysis identified QTLs associated with aluminum tolerance in chickpea" (2025). With 34 publications and 377 citations, her work significantly impacts sustainable farming practices. She is affiliated with the Centre for Sustainable Farming Systems and the Land Management Group.