Rana Ellen Munns is an Australian botanist whose primary research has been to determine the traits that underpin salinity tolerance and adaptation to drought in crop plants. Rana was born in Sydney Australia and attended the University of Sydney, receiving her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry in 1966. She completed her Ph.D. in 1972 to begin a lifelong course of research on salt tolerance of plants first as a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and later at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra. In the early 1990s, she found that sodium exclusion was an important trait associated with the salt tolerance in wheat using a seedling stage assay. This work culminated in understanding wheat grain yield in saline soils in terms of genetic components that could be improved by an ancestral transporter gene. This research eventually led to a cultivar of wheat that yielded 25% more on saline soils that in farmers' fields and is used by over thirty wheat seed companies globally.
BSc (Hons 1st Class) 1966 Biochemistry Department, University of Sydney<br /> Doctor of Philosophy 1972, CSIRO Plant Physiology Unit, University of Sydney. Chloroplast Development<br /> 1973âÂÂ1976 Senior Tutor, Macquarie University, NSW<br /> 1977âÂÂ1980 Research Fellow, Department of Agronomy, University of Western Australia<br /> 1981âÂÂ2005 Research Scientist CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra<br /> 2005âÂÂ2010 Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Canberra<br /> 2011âÂÂpresent Honorary Fellow, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra<br /> 2011âÂÂ2013 Winthrop Research Professor, School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia<br /> 2014âÂÂpresent Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, jointly with School of Plant Biology
Former Editor-in-chief of Functional Plant Biology