Professor Anna Koltunow (FAA, FTSE), is a Professorial Research Fellow in QAAFI at The University of Queensland. Her research is focused on plant seed and fruit development. She and is an internationally recognised expert in an asexual form of seed formation in plants called apomixis. She has been involved in collaborative research projects on seed and fruit development with various laboratories in the United States, Europe, China, Japan and Brasil. She and has worked with the horticultural industry to develop seedless fruit. Her research on apomixis is being applied to a range of crops where it should significantly economise hybrid seed production. She currently leads a multiparty international research program funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to develop self-reproducing hybrids in cowpea and sorghum which are subsistence crops for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.