Biotech Updates

Winners of Fellowships to Focus on Wheat and Cacao

April 20, 2007

Bioversity International announced the winners of this year’s Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships, a program that aims to enable outstanding young scientists from developing countries to carry out research that is relevant and innovative outside of their own countries. Adriana Arciniegas Leal, from Colombia, will examine samples of cacao diversity to establish whether plants with a similar molecular profile also have similar agronomic characteristics. Mehraj Abbasov, from Azerbaijan, will focus on the ability of wheat to tolerate high salinity. Abbasov will examine variation in two genes known to confer tolerance to salt. Leal will carry out most of her research at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica, while Abbasov will work with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) scientists.

For further information, contact Cassandra Moore at c.moore@cgiar.org or read the press release at http://news.bioversityinternational.org/index.php?itemid=1772.