Chad Jorgensen

Chad Jorgensen
Bio

My work is focused on the dissection of the domestication syndrome in wheat by working with a recombinant inbred and a backcross recombinant inbred population developed from a cross of wild tetraploid Triticum dicoccoides and cultivated T. durum, from which I will identify QTLs for domestication and agronomic traits. Interestingly, I am seeing transgressive segregation for seeds size and yield in the backcrossed population. I am also working with a T. aestivum population which segregates for a disomic substitution from the D genome progenitor, Aegilops tauschii, in order to map a domestication gene in the D genome. My goals are to continue working with wild relatives of crop plants, utilizing plant breeding and genetics, in order to assist farmers in their struggle to keep pace with the world’s appetite.