Photo Source: Babushahi Bureau
PAU & US varsities hold 10-day workshop for doctoral students
Babushahi Bureau
Ludhiana, March 31, 2023: The Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), organized a 10-day long training workshop on “GBS Data Analysis, Linkage Map Construction, and QTL Analysis” from March 19-28.
The workshop was organized in collaboration with Washington State University, Pullman, USA under the collaborative research project jointly funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC, New Delhi).
About 30 Ph.D. students and scientists from various collaborating Universities and PAU participated in the workshop.
A PAU alumnus Dr. Kulvinder S Gill, Professor, and Project Director, along with Dr. Johar Singh, Principal Wheat Breeder, and Project Principal Investigator from the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, co-organized the hands-on workshop.
Dr. Ashima Relan helped with various aspects of the workshop which covered both the theoretical concepts and actual analysis of various genetic approaches including analysis of DNA sequencing data, genetic mapping, QTL analysis and the application of the data in crop improvement and breeding.
Dr Ajmer Singh Dhatt, Director of Research, while inaugurating the workshop, hailed the efforts of Dr Kulvinder Gill, who has been working in collaboration with PAU for more than a decade and instrumental in organizing such trainings.
Dr Virinder Singh Sohu, Head, Department of Plant Breeding, said that four training courses have already been conducted by the project and that the present workshop laid a special emphasis on big data and DNA sequence analysis.
He further said that the training of the doctoral students and young scientists in the handling of the big data on DNA sequencing was the ‘need of the hour’ for efficiently utilizing this data.