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Browse Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics Stories - Page 5

81 results found for Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics
CAES FFAR Fellow Shreena Pradhan and Sujan Paudel CAES News
FFAR Fellows
Two doctoral candidates in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at University of Georgia have been selected for the 2021 class of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) Fellows program.
Hemp is the same species as marijuana (Cannabis sativa), and the only difference is a legal one: Plants with less than 0.3% of the chemical that gives users a “high”— tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — are hemp, and anything over 0.3% THC is marijuana. CAES News
Hemp Genetics
When you buy something at the store, you have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting no matter where you buy it — a Coke is a Coke, Oreos are Oreos — and whether you buy them in Atlanta or Seattle doesn’t really change what you get. Farmers are in a similar position when they choose what to plant, but in the burgeoning field of industrial hemp, it turns out that things are much more complicated.
At UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, 2021 Borlaug Undergraduate Scholar Samantha Wegener discovered precision plant breeding — the combination of gene editing and engineering — which showed her a path to solving complicated issues to improve plant varieties. CAES News
2021 Borlaug Undergraduate Scholar
Samantha Wegener enrolled at the University of Georgia’s Tifton campus after earning her associate’s degree in biology from the Technical College of the Lowcountry in Beaufort, South Carolina. It was during her last semester in Beaufort that Wegener was introduced to the world of plant breeding.
Professor David Bertioli and senior research scientist Soraya Leal-Bertioli work together with peanut plants in their greenhouses at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies. CAES News
Best of Both Worlds
The wild relatives of modern peanut plants have the ability to withstand disease in ways that modern peanut plants can’t. The genetic diversity of these wild relatives means that they can shrug off the diseases that kill farmers’ peanut crops, but they also produce tiny nuts that are difficult to harvest because they burrow deep in the soil.
Three graduate students in the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) have been honored with an E. Broadus Browne Award for Outstanding Graduate Research: plant pathology student Shaun Stice took first place in the Ph.D. category; Sam McDonald, a plant breeding, genetics and genomics student placed second in the Ph.D category; and plant pathology student Caroline Burks received first place in the master’s category. CAES News
Graduate Student Awards 2021
Three graduate students in the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences have been honored with an E. Broadus Browne Award for Outstanding Graduate Research.
Qian Feng, a second-year doctoral candidate in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, has mapped additional genes responsible for volatile production in order to offer a more complete picture of the biochemical pathways in tomatoes. She hopes that other researchers can introduce the desirable genes into current or new varieties to breed a tastier  tomato. CAES News
Tastier Tomatoes
Why have tomatoes lost their flavor? Why do some dishes call for ketchup when cooking with tomatoes? These are a couple of the questions that Qian Feng, a second-year University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences doctoral candidate, seeks to answer through her research.
Peggy Ozias-Akins, a global leader in the application of biotechnology for crop improvement, has been named UGA’s recipient of the SEC Faculty Achievement Award. She is pictured in her greenhouse surrounded by Pennisetum (pearl millet) hybrid plants. CAES News
SEC Faculty Achievement Award
Peggy Ozias-Akins, D.W. Brooks Professor and Distinguished Research Professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, has been named the University of Georgia’s recipient of the Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award.  
Graduate student Philip Bentz (left) and graduate student Rick Field (right) use a carbon dioxide sensor on a plant in the horticulture greenhouses. Bentz enrolled to UGA in the Integrated Plant Sciences program in 2019. (photo by Dorothy Kozlowski, taken prior to March 2020) CAES News
Integrated Plant Sciences
For students with a penchant for plants and the desire to pursue a doctoral degree, the University of Georgia offers a collaborative program that spans a variety of cutting-edge and interdisciplinary plant science disciplines.
Katrien Devos and two colleagues from her lab were part of a nationwide team that produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome. (Photo by Peter Frey) CAES News
Unlocking Switchgrass Genome
As reported Jan. 27 in Nature, a nationwide team that includes University of Georgia faculty member Katrien Devos has produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome, marking a critical step for a plant species that has long been studied for its potential application in the production of biofuels.