| Citation | Deborah Charlesworth specialises in research on plant evolutionary and population genetics, and the evolution of plant breeding systems. Her research is unusual in combining theoretical and empirical studies. She is best known for her work on the avoidance of inbreeding and on the evolution of dioecy (unisexual male and female flowers on separate individuals), sex chromosomes, and self-incompatibility (the genetically controlled mechanism by which many hermaphrodite species of flowering plants reject their own pollen and ensure that their ovules are fertilised by pollen from other individuals). Throughout her work on these topics, common themes have been the evolution of systems involving multiple genes, and the evolutionary importance of recombination between genes and of deleterious mutations. |