Reminders of the pumpkin season!

 

Reunited: Dr. Cecilia McGregor, and her past graduate student Dr. Geoffrey Meru (now Assistant Professor at University of Florida) co-organizing CUCURBITACEAE 2022.

 

Congratulations to Douglas Vines

Congratulations to Douglas Vines, who won 1st place for his poster entitled "Watermelon Fruit Shape associated with allelic variation in ClSUN25-26-27a" at the 2022 ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting in Baltimore. Great job Douglas!

17th Annual Giant Pumpkin Regatta - University of Wisconsin-Madison

This weekend we were honored to join the Goldman lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison for their 17th Annual Giant Pumpkin Regatta. We had a great time and hopefully this is the start of the annual intercollegiate Giant Pumpkin Regatta. Hope to see everybody in Athens next year!

That's a wrap for the watermelon season and beginning of pumpkins #Orange Bulldog

Watermelon Transplantation Day @UGA Horticulture farm

Watermelon Harvest Day

Watermelon Phenotyping

Orange Bulldog Transplantation

 

Fun evening at the UGA HortFarm Open House, 2022. Visitors loved tasting different varieties of watermelon, and learning about our research.

 

Highlights of the CROPS conference 2022 at Huntsville, Alabama

 

Ph.d. Student Poster Presentation

Greenhouse facility Tour at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology

Reception at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center

McGregor lab at the annual IPBGG retreat

 

Dr. McGregor in conversation with Dr. Shan Wu

Dr. Shan Wu visited from  Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Cornell University

Talk: Pan-genome of Wild and Cultivated Watermelons

Ph.D. Student, Samikshya Rijal

Poster Presentation

 

                                               Atlantic Ocean @ Jekyll Island, GA

It's summer, so that means field work!

Good day out in the field

Alex telling a joke? I missed it.

Starting day with a pleasant visit to our greenhouse facility. Squash collections maintained by Dr. Luckew (Post-doc) are having beautiful female flowers, well complemented by marigolds used for insect trapping.

 

McGregor lab members (including our PI, Dr. McGregor) attended Joint Southeastern Branch ESA and APS-CD conference in San Juan Puerto Rico.

 

Congratulations! Jesse Kuzy is moving on with a new job. Last lunch with him as a member of our lab. He has been a part of this lab since 2018.

 

Samikshya Rijal featured in UGA CAES Cultivate Student Spotlight

 Read all about Samikshya in CAES Cultivate. Samikshya joined our lab at the beginning of 2021 and is already making a big impact!

Our paper "Field Evaluation of Cucurbita Germplasm for Resistance to Whiteflies and Whitefly-transmitted Viruses" published

Our paper, "Field Evaluation of Cucurbita Germplasm for Resistance to Whiteflies and Whitefly-transmitted Viruses" has been published in HortScience.Alex Luckew was the lead on this research an it was a big effort by researchers at UGA, the University of Florida, Auburn University and the University of Guelp. Congratulations Alex and the whole team!

Congratulations Douglas Vines

Congratulations to Douglas Vines who won 3rd prize for his undergraduate poster at the annual Plant Center Retreat. The title of the poster was "ClSUN25-26-27a Allelic Variation Associated with Watermelon Fruit Shape". Sammy Josiah is co-author on this poster.

 

Orange Bulldog pumpkin featured in Caes Newswire

 The CAES Newswire recently did a story about growing fall pumpkins in Georgia and Orange Bulldog pumpkin was prominently featured. Read the story here.

Orange Bulldog seed production

 The lab has been very busy over the past couple of weeks harvesting and processing Orange Bulldog seed. It was a big team effort. Thanks to all lab members and the farm crew for all their hard work.

Watermelon Harvest

Summer is ending so that means harvesting watermelon trials. It was a good workout!

Plant Breeding Practicum visits Watermelon Breeding Program

 Students from the Plant Breeding Practicum (PBGG 6000), accompanied by Dr. Wayne Parrott, visited the watermelon breeding program today. The practicum give graduate students the opportunity to visit different UGA breeding programs in Athens, Griffin and Tifton to see first-hand the practical aspects of breeding different crops. And every visit to our program must end with tasting some delicious watermelon!

Thanks for the visit! It was a lot of fun!

Getting Ready for the Season

 Lab members came out to help in sampling for genotyping before transplanting in the field.