Robert Reid, research assistant professor with UNC Charlotte’s Bioinformatics Services Division at the North Carolina Research Campus, has received a $25,000 grant through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the “Improvement of Banana for the Smallholder Farmers in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.”
Reid will work with Al Brown of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on the project.
For this project, Reid will be sequencing selected varieties of the East African highland banana for the purpose of developing an Illumina SNP microarray, specific for banana genotyping.
Ultimately, this will guide and accelerate breeding strategies to develop new varieties of crops that are more resistant to disease, provide more nutrition for consumers and better yield for farmers, stimulating local economies.
Read more about this news on the College of Computing and Informatics website.