Dr Fengduo Hu comes from a wide agricultural science background. Before joining SRA (BSES Limited) in 2009, he was employed by CSIRO for over 10 years. He has over 20 years’ experience in introgression of exotic germplasm in sugarcane improvement, sugarcane breeding and the economic evaluation of sugarcane varieties. His research involves breeding sugarcane varieties, using a range of traditional breeding methods. Since 2016, he has been responsible for the Herbert selection program and the SRA introgression program (to broaden the genetic base of germplasm used as parents which is one key source of new variation in production traits and disease resistance in variety development).