Diane M. Beckles

Diane M. Beckles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She is also an Associate Postharvest Biochemist, focusing on how pre- and postharvest environmental factors influence fruit and cereal quality and yield. Her research employs a multidisciplinary approach, integrating biochemistry, molecular biology, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and applied physics/chemistry.

Her work has included genetic diversity studies of Coffea canephora in Nigeria, reclassifying coffee genotypes through genotyping-by-sequencing. Key research areas include abiotic stress tolerance in crops (e.g., chilling injury in fruits like tomato, pineapple, and cucumber), root system architecture under nitrogen deficiency, and postharvest storage technologies. She leads the Diane Beckles Lab, which explores starch metabolism, gene editing applications, and crop improvement.

Recent publications emphasize genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for disease resistance and stress tolerance in cucumber, methylome/transcriptome analyses in tomato, and wild emmer wheat introgression for nitrogen tolerance. Her work bridges fundamental plant biology with applied agricultural solutions to reduce postharvest losses and enhance crop resilience.