Dr. Mui-Keng Tan was appointed to the position of a Senior Research Scientist in 2002 at New South Wales Department of Primary Industries. She played a central investigator's role in various industry funded projects on the detection of herbicide resistance in agricultural weeds and in the molecular marker development for quality traits in wheat. Her research has provided valuable commercial or industry outcomes besides having contributed new knowledge to basic science.

She is currently the CRCNPB's project leader for developing the national diagnostic protocol for Karnal bunt, a quarantine pathogen for wheat.

Her research interests include:

• Marker development for wheat quality traits and the genetic and molecular basis of agronomic traits (quality, stress, disease resistance) in cereals  
• Fungal systematics and development of diagnostic molecular protocols for plant pathogens
• Molecular basis of herbicide resistance in wild radish, wild oats and ryegrass