Samuel Muiru: A short term trainee at the BecA-ILRI Hub

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Details: Written on Tuesday, 22 June 2010 00:28

Dr. Samuel Muiru is an Associate Professional Officer in the Plant pathology department of ICRISAT-Malawi and is based in Lilongwe the Capital City. Samuel has been in the Hub since 7th June to learn how to detect the various virus components associated with groundnut rosette disease (GRD).

ICRISAT has a large ongoing breeding program on groundnuts in Malawi and one aspect that it focuses on is groundnut resistance to GRD. This breeding program has been very successful and there are a number of GRD resistant lines already released. Breeders now want to determine the mechanism of resistance and need to be able to detect the causal agents of GRD.

Samuel will receive training on RNA extraction and RT-PCR for virus detection. His training will be led by Santie deVilliers, an ICRISAT scientist working at the BecA-ILRI Hub, assisted by Mercy Kitavi and Geoffrey Mugambi, research technicians at the Hub.

Samuel with one of the technicians at the bench