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.

Summer has begun!!

 The 2021 watermelon field evaluation has been transplanted today, marking the official start of Summer! 

In a short time, this field will be thriving with delicious fruit.

As you can see from all the happy faces, it was a great day to be outside working in the field. This is Samikshya's first year getting to enjoy this experience.

Seeking Graduate Student

A graduate student position (MS or PhD) is available in our lab to do research on whitefly-transmitted virsus resistance in cucurbits. Interested parties should contact Dr. McGregor.

New Lab Member

 Welcome Samikshya Rijal! 

Samikshya graduated with a B. S in Agriculture Sciences from Tribhuvan University, Nepal in 2017 and a master’s degree in agricultural sciences from the University of New Hampshire in 2020. Her previous work involved marker-assisted breeding, and tissue culture. Her focus was QTL mapping for the flowering trait in strawberries. 

She will be continuing  work on gummy stem blight resistance in watermelon, as part of the CucCap 2 project (National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, award number 2020-51181-32139).

QTL and markers for selection of Gummy Stem Blight resistance in watermelon

 We just published a new paper in Theoretical and Applied Genetics describing QTL mapping of gummy stem blight resistance in watermelon. You can read more about it here.

 

New markers for selection fo flesh color in watermelon

In collaboration with Dr Geung-Joo Lee from Korea a new study was just published in Genes on PPR-derived markers for flesh color in watermelon.