| Affiliations: | Genetics & Genomics Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | June Labbancz junelabbancz@tamu.edu Horticultural Sciences |
| Faculty Mentor: | Amit Dhingra, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBA |
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Team Size:
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4 |
| Open Spots: | 2 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Students will have opportunities to become familiar with nanopore long-read sequencing, bioinformatics for analysis of sequencing data, plant tissue culture/micropropagation, and supporting wet lab procedures. Everything from sample collection to data analysis will be taught.
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Team Needs:
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Coursework in genetics and molecular biology strongly preferred. |
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Description:
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Despite being one of the most widely cultivated fruit crops, pear cultivation suffers from a range of issues including a dearth of dwarfing rootstocks, a relative lack of climate-resilient cultivars, fire blight susceptibility, and poor storage characteristics. The first step on the path to solving these issues is developing a better understanding of pear genomics and genotype-phenotype relationships. To help develop this understanding, two diverse germplasm sets have been created and maintained: one via mutation breeding of commercially relevant pear cultivars, and one from a sampling of both cultivated and wild Pyrus accessions from the National Clonal Germplasm Repository. These pears will be genetically characterized using nanopore long-read sequencing; genes, alleles, and structural variants of interest will be identified. |