Rate My Professor Justin Lashbrooke

Dr. Justin Lashbrooke is a lecturer in the Department of Genetics at Stellenbosch University and serves as group leader of the Fruit Functional Genomics laboratory. He completed his BSc and MSc degrees in Biotechnology at Stellenbosch University. He then pursued his PhD from 2010 to 2015 in a joint program between the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Fondazione Edmund Mach in Italy, under the supervision of Asaph Aharoni and Fabrizio Costa. His doctoral research examined the genetic regulation of fruit surface formation, with functional characterisation of genes in tomato, apple, and Arabidopsis.

Following his PhD, Lashbrooke undertook postdoctoral research at ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij in Stellenbosch under Ken Tobutt, focusing on applied aspects of apple breeding and genetics, including anthocyanin formation and bud break. In his current role, he leads the grapevine molecular breeding platform at Stellenbosch University. His research interests centre on secondary metabolism, plant-environment interactions, and the application of genetics, genomics, metabolomics, and biotechnology to develop improved fruit cultivars, with particular emphasis on grapevine and apple.