Research Scientist, Agriculture Victoria

Horsham, Victoria

Dharushana joined the Plant Pathology team at Agriculture Victoria as a Research Scientist in mid-2023 and since then predominantly works on pulse crops. She is involved in the delivery of disease surveillance, screening, and management programs. Notably, she has been involved in the surveillance of foliar and soil-borne diseases in faba bean and lentil crops in Victorian regions and chickpea Ascochyta blight high-throughput phenotyping under controlled conditions. Starting 2024, she has been managing field trials to develop improved field screening methods for lentil BGM resistance and integrated disease management strategies for improved chickpea Ascochyta blight resistance. She enjoys her role as it lets her engage with real time applications of research findings.

Prior to joining Agriculture Victoria, Dharushana completed her PhD in 2022 at the University of Tasmania. Her PhD study was aimed to identify the critical inocula sources of the spread of systemic downy mildew in opium poppy. Prior to PhD, she completed M.Phil. in natural products chemistry and a bachelor’s degree in agriculture science with a specialization in biotechnology. Dharushana is also a qualified Graduate Chemist. She equally enjoys indoor and outdoor work and is always keen to collaborate on interesting research projects.

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dharushana-Thanabalasingam 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5966-0148 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dharushana-ph-d-m-phil-b-sc-agric-grad-chem-11092858 

Twitter: https://x.com/Dharu12shana