Diane Beckles

Research in the Beckles lab is oriented to the mission of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Thus, it centers on how pre- and postharvest environmental factors determine fruit and cereal quality and yield.

Plant sugars and starch provide humans with food, feed, fuel and biomaterials, and quantitatively, are the most important parameter determining fruit postharvest and grain nutritive quality. Beckles' research, therefore, has the potential to address fundamental questions related to global food security and environmental sustainability.

The approach is by necessity multidisciplinary and includes biochemistry, molecular biology, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and physiology, generally applied to tomatoes, rice, and wheat.