- Webinar Speakers
Dr. Satish Kumar
Scientist,
Plant & Food Research LLC, New ZealandSatish Kumar is a scientist at Plant & Food Research, New Zealand. He earned his PhD degree in Genetics and Breeding from Massey University, and then worked as a scientist (Tree Improvement) at the New Zealand Forest Research Institute, Rotorua for 10 years before joining Plant & Food Research in 2009. His area of research includes breeding and genetic evaluation strategies, germplasm conservation and improvement, and genetic architecture of fruit traits. Dr Kumar led the first application of genomic selection and GWAS in apple breeding. His current research focuses on the integration of genetics and genomics technologies into breeding programmes of horticultural crops.
- Webinar Abstract
The allelic diversity of primitive germplasm of fruit crops provides a useful resource for introgressing novel genes to meet consumer preferences and environmental challenges. Pre-breeding facilitates the identification of novel genetic variation in the primitive germplasm and expedite its utilisation in cultivar breeding programmes. Several generations of pre-breeding could be required to minimise linkage drag from the donor parent and to maximise the genomic content of the recipient parent. In this study we investigated the potential of genomic selection (GS) as a tool for rapid background selection of parents for the successive generation. In this webinar, Dr Kumar will discuss the overview of breeding designs, the genetic architecture of economically important traits and genomic selection for fruit tree breeding.