Mutation Breeding and Efficiency Enhancing Technologies for Resistance to Striga in Cereals (Hardcover)

Abdelbagi M. A. Ghanim is an experienced plant breeder with focus on cereal breeding and related efficiency-enhancing technologies for rain-fed and irrigated dry lands. He served as the Project Officer and Technical Coordinator of the five-year IAEA coordinated research project on mutation breeding for resistance to Striga in cereals. This was during his tenure as Plant Breeder and Geneticist at the Plant Breeding and Genetics Laboratory of the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre in Seibersdorf, Austria. Prior to this role, he served as Research Professor at Agriculture Research Corporation in Sudan. Ghanim has released and registered six varieties of wheat and cotton as main contributor and five varieties of wheat and watermelon as a collaborator. He has a PhD in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the Faculty of Agriculture, Tottori University, Japan, and MSc from the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Khartoum, Sudan. Ghanim was also a Japan Science and Technology Postdoctoral Fellow at the JapanNational Research Centre, Tsukuba. Patrick J. Rich isa sorghum geneticist specializing in Striga resistance. He works at the University of Purdue in the laboratory of the 2009 World Food Prize Laureate, Gebisa Ejeta. Rich and his colleagues have identified several genes in sorghum controlling forage quality, drought and Striga resistance. He has received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation supporting his work on resistance to the parasitic weed Striga. Rich has co-authored 32 peer-reviewed publications, including 7 book chapters. His works have been cited in over 1000 publications. He received his Ph.D. in Plant Physiology from Purdue University.