DNA Extractions

For the past few weeks in the lab, student workers and graduate students have been doing plant DNA extractions for marker development. You can see the small DNA pellet in the image!

Cucurbitaceae 2018

November was an exciting month as the lab members traveled to California to present their research at the Cucurbitacae Conference.

Dr. Cecilia McGregor giving her presentation on "Chromosomal Locations of Four Loci Controlling Watermelon Seed Coat Color", in California at the Cucurbitacae Conference in 2018.

Graduate student Winnie giving her presentation on fine-mapping and flowering time for watermelons at the Cucurbitaceae conference in 2018. 

Graduate students Reeve and Jorge also made posters and presented their research at the conference held at UC Davis.

Plant Center Fall Retreat 2018

Members of the lab attended the annual Plant Center Fall Retreat at Unicoi State Park. Reeve, Winnie and Jorge were among the approximately 100 graduate students and postdocs who presented poster at the event. Congratulations to all the participants and especially Winnie who won 1st prize for her poster entitled "Fine-mapping of a Major Quantitative Trait Locus Qdff3-1 Controlling Flowering Time in Watermelon."

The watermelon harvest season of 2018 is coming to a close and the McGregor Lab wants to express our sincere gratitude to our undergraduate workers for putting up with all of the mud, sweat, weeds, and bugbites that make our research possible!

Thank you for all of your hard work Christie, Emma, Jackie, Sam and Becca!

Field season in full swing

Summer is always a busy time in our program. Here is Jackie Do, one of our undergraduate students helping to make selections in the field for the breeding program. Doens't that look delicious!

Congratulations Marin!

Marin Lonnee won first prize at the CAES Young scholars poster competition (Athens) for her poster entitled "Evaluation of Gummy Stem Blight Resistance in Watermelon Using Stagonosporopsis spp. Isolates". Congratulations to Marin and her mentor, Winnie Gimode.

Marin, with her mentor, Winnie Gimode

Proud parents!

Marin presents her poster at the YSP conference

Marin Lonnee presented her poster at the UGA CAES Young Scholar Internship Program Pre-Collegiate Research Conference.  Marin carried out research with Winnie Gimode on the resistance of watermelon genotypes to specific fugal species and isolates that cause gummy stem blight in watermelon.

Summer Twilight Field Day

Twilight field day at the Durham Horticulture Farm in Watkinsville. We were excited to tell everybody about watermelon. Thanks to all who who came by and talked to us.

Graduation Patry for Lucky

Congratulations Lukcy!

Congratulations to Lucky Paudel for successfully defending his M.S. thesis entitled "Refining the Egusi Locus and Mapping of Seed Coat Color Genes in Watermelon". Lucky did a great job and we are all very proud of him!

Dr. McGregor teaches at University of Padua

Dr. McGregor spent April and May teaching Plant Breeding at  The University of Padua in Italy as part of the dual master's degree program in Crop and Soil Sciences (Sustainable Agriculture).

Friday Lab Group 1

Friday Lab Group 2

And a beautiful agarose gel! Well done.

End of semester drinks

Gummy Stem Blight Research Project featured

Our collaborative research project on the early detection of Gummy stem blight in greenhouses and fields were featured in CAES Newswire. This is a collaborative project with Drs. Bhabesh Dutta and Marin Brewer in UGA Plant Pathology and is funded by the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

Jorge Reyes (Ph.D. student) testing a spore trap

Lab members, new and old

We added several new lab members in 2018. Welcome to Jesse Kuze (research technician), Jorge Reyes (Ph.D student) and Ayse Topco (research assistant). We all gathered together to say goodbye to Daniel Powell, our long time undergraduate research assistant who graduated.

Position available: Research Tech III - Vegetable Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics

We currently have an opening for a Research Technician available in our group. Details of the position and application instruction can be found here.

Leigh Ann Fall - Graduation

Congratulation to Leigh Ann Fall, who graduated in December 2017. We wish you all the best with your future endeavors.