Lucia Gutierrez, professor of crop breeding and crop diversity

Lucia Gutierrez's research field is quantitative genetics applied to plant breeding. She sees an urgent need for climate‑resilient crops, and investigates the biological “machinery” that plants use to survive environmental stress. She explores advances in ‘omics’ technologies and big-data modelling to predict crop performance even before crops are planted. She also deploys innovative experimental designs to further streamline breeding by extracting maximum information from minimal field testing. Ultimately, her integrated approach accelerates the release of climate‑smart cultivars, strengthening global food systems in the face of a changing climate.

Biography

Lucia Gutierrez was born in 1978 and grew up in Gothenburg in Sweden. She studied at the Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay and obtained a degree in agricultural sciences (Ingeniera Agronoma) in 2001. She continued with research studies at Iowa State University in the USA and obtained a PhD degree in 2008 with a thesis on genetic diversity in the barley genus and was then a postdoctoral fellow at Wageningen University and Research Center.

Lucia Gutierrez worked with statistical genetics at her mother university in Uruguay during the years 2008–2014 and continued as a professor of cereal breeding and quantitative genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a period as a visiting professor at SLU in 2022–2023. Lucia Gutierrez has had extensive international collaborations and important roles in several scientific plant breeding organisations.

Press photo

• Download portrait of Lucia Gutierrez Photo: Johanna Grundström
• Download activity picture of Lucia Gutierrez Photo: Valentin Picasso

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