Agricultural researcher Awais Khan is working on new ways to breed disease-resistant apples. Khan, born and raised in Azad Kashmir, Pakistani-administered Jammu and Kashmir, is an associate professor at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science. He explains that in his research group, they are characterizing the genetics of disease resistance in apples, as a way to develop varieties with improved resistance. and methods for sustainably managing diseases in apple orchards.
“We are developing new methods including rapid-cycle breeding, genome editing and marker-assisted breeding to overcome some of these obstacles and accelerate the targeted breeding of high-quality disease-resistant cultivars,” he says, adding that even today, the selection of disease-resistant cultivars and good quality fruit from woody perennial crops, such as apple, is particularly time-consuming, laborious and expensive.
“We are characterizing disease resistance mechanisms using quantitative genetics, genomics, transcriptomics and bioinformatics; develop high-throughput methods for plant resistance phenotyping; let’s develop DNA markers for marker-assisted breeding and develop disease-resistant screening lines,” says Khan, adding that he has always been interested in how scientific research translates into real-life situations in the field.
“My goal has always been to bring the knowledge gained in these leading institutions to poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture,” he says.
Source: oltnews.com