Guotai obtained his PhD in plant sciences (plant genetics and breeding) from North Dakota State University, USA. Prior to this, he received his Master’s degree in soil science and plant nutrition from Zhejiang University, China. He has worked on multiple traits in wheat, barley and wild grasses including nutrition, plant height, malting quality, and resistance to fusarium head blight, Septoria tritici blotch, stem rust, and Hessian fly. He has experience in DNA and RNA extraction, DNA marker development, constructing genome linkage maps, positional cloning, QTL mapping, GWAS, mutational genomics, RNA and DNA assembly, gene annotation, and engineering gene constructs for transformation.

Currently, he works on cloning rust resistance genes from wheat wild relatives (such as Aegilops sharonensis and Triticum dicoccoides) using positional cloning and newly developed state-of-the-art technologies that combine genetics, genomics, mutagenesis, and k-mer GWAS.

He is also interested in plant resistance genes, resistance gene evolution and gene-for-gene relationships between rust resistance genes and the pathogen avirulence genes.