Dr Sadiye Hayta

Wheat Transformation Lead

Sadiye leads the Wheat Transformation platform at the John Innes Centre, where she provides tailored plant transformation and gene-editing services to both internal and external researchers. She collaborates widely with JIC research groups, UK institutes, and universities, supporting diverse projects across wheat genetics and crop improvement.

She works closely with the Delivering Sustainable Wheat (DSW) programme and leads JIC’s Wheat Breeders’ Toolkit – Gene Editing (GE) activities in partnership with DSW collaborators. In addition, she heads JIC’s gene-editing contribution to the Defra Wheat Genetic Improvement Network (WGIN), which aims to improve wheat efficiency, resilience, adaptation, and sustainability through genetics, precision breeding, and targeted trait analysis.

Her primary research focus is the development of innovative transformation and genome-editing technologies tailored to wheat research needs. She works to increase transformation efficiency across a broader range of wheat genotypes and to implement advanced editing strategies suitable for elite cultivars.

Sadiye developed a robust Agrobacterium-mediated wheat transformation system. By integrating this platform with the GRF–GIF developmental gene fusion technology (originating from the Dubcovsky lab at UC Davis), she significantly improved transformation efficiency and expanded the number of wheat genotypes amenable to gene editing. This enables modern genome-editing tools to be applied directly to elite wheat varieties rather than model lines.

Her work aligns closely with evolving UK regulatory frameworks, including the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act, supporting the deployment of precision breeding to accelerate sustainable wheat improvement.

Selected Publications

See all of Dr Sadiye Hayta's publications