Problem Solver
Douglas Furtek
Areas Douglas Furtek is Knowledgeable in:
Using single-seed - or even single-seedling - metabolomics and population selection to create populations of plants with remarkable quality attributes
Converting biomass into valuable products - Waste to Wealth
Vegetable oil biosynthesis
Converting biomass into valuable products - Waste to Wealth
Vegetable oil biosynthesis
Techniques Douglas Furtek Uses:
1. Rapid and inexpensive single-seed metabolomics - applicable to any seed product
2. Population selection
3. Novel roasting of cocoa and coffee beans
4. Plant tissue culture
2. Population selection
3. Novel roasting of cocoa and coffee beans
4. Plant tissue culture
Douglas Furtek's Problem Solving Skills:
- Extensive writing of scientific articles and grant proposals in the biological sciences.
Douglas Furtek's Problem Solving Experience:
- I personally regenerated the first cocoa trees in Malaysia through somatic embryogenesis.
- My Malaysian Cocoa Board team discovered that more storage protein in cocoa beans leads to more cocoa flavor.
- I wrote the cocoa genomics research plan for the Malaysian Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities. I devised a unique method to increase the proportion of superior tress in a highly genetically-diverse population - not employing traditional mapping/breeding/crossing or quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis.
- Created the Malaysian Renaissance Cocoa project – development of trees bearing truly unique and high-value specialty cocoa beans.
- My Malaysian Cocoa Board team discovered high diversity of metabolites in single embryos even within the same fruit (pod).
- Gave a major food company the guidelines for creating the finest coffees and cocoas unlike any others on earth today.