Seminar_Molla Fentie Mengist_2.20.23.pdf

Polyploidy is a phenomenon in which an organism has more than two complete sets of chromosomes in every cell, and has played a major role in plant evolution. Most flowering plants including economically important crops such as potato, wheat and blueberry are polyploids. Recent advances in next generation sequencing and software tools have opened the opportunities to develop genetic and genomic resources for polyploidy crops, to investigate genetic and genomic features, and unravel the genetic basis of important agronomical, nutritional and quality traits for these crops. In this seminar, Dr. Mengist will present the development of genetic and genomic resources in blueberry and potato, and the application of these genetic and genomic resources to understand genomic and genetic features, population genetics and gene discovery. Dr. Mengist will highlight the identification of major-effect loci controlling fruit quality traits (anthocyanin, titratable acidity and total soluble solids) in blueberry.

Dr. Molla Fentie Mengist works as a research scholar in the lab of Dr. Massimo Iorizzo, at the Plants for Human Health Institute, North Carolina State University. He earned his PhD in plant genetics and physiology from University College Cork, Ireland in 2018, and Erasmus Mundus joint master’s degrees in horticultural science (Technical University of Munich, Germany; Boku University, Austria and Bologna University, Italy) in 2013. He also has a master’s degree in plant breeding, and prior to his PhD he worked as a plant breeder for five years in Ethiopia. During his career, he developed expertise in quantitative genetics, in particular in polyploidy species. His research aims to develop routes for the application of plant genetics and genomics-based approaches as selection tools in plant breeding.