Consultants
Dr Paul Brennan is a graduate of the University of Queensland (Australia) and the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) in genetics and plant breeding. He spent thirty three years as a wheat breeder where he released or has been heavily involved in the development of twenty three wheat varieties and the author of a number of scientific papers and presentations at both national and internal conferences. His wheat varieties commanded over 20% of the Australian wheat deliveries over an extended period. During his time as a wheat breeder Dr Brennan co-supervised a number of graduate students with Professor Don Byth and Drs Mark Cooper (now with Pioneer Hi-Bred) and Ian Godwin (University of Queensland) and Professor Mark Sutherland and Dr Grant Daggard (University of Southern Queensland).
The needs of a competitive wheat breeding program required the deployment of many advanced plant breeding and genetic skills which were obtained through inservice training at the (then) Plant Breeding Institute (Cambridge), attending national and international conferences and through personal research.
Dr Brennan held appointed as the Director of the Queensland Wheat Research Institute, as a director of the Sugar Research and Development Corporation and to the Northern Panel for the Grains Research and Development Corporation. These appointments facilitated the development of skills in evaluating research proposals, reviewing research programs and negotiating local, national and international research programs. During this time Dr Brennan employed the plant molecular biology skills learned in Cambridge to undertake local, national and international programs in the development of molecular marker technology for wheat breeding.
Dr Brennan also devoted considerable time and energy to the development of skills in the exploitation (commercialisation) of and policy for plant intellectual property.
Dr Brennan has conducted his own consulting business in plant breeding and the application of molecular biology to plant breeding since 1999. In addition to the further development of the skills mentioned above, Dr Brennan has consulted to a wide range of national and international organisations and across more than thirty agricultural and horticultural species. A considerable focus in Dr Brennan’s consultancy work has been in the area of change management for plant improvement investments and to ensure that outcomes from investments in plant breeding have a high potential of meeting the expectations of the investor.
