Negussie Zenna is a postdoctoral fellow with the Africa Rice Center in Dar-es Salaam, Tanzania. He is currently working on the Stress Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project funded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project aims to accelerate the development and delivery of improved rice varieties that are tolerant to five major abiotic stresses; drought, submergence, salinity, iron toxicity and low temperature. Dr. Zenna’s research specifically involves developing rice varieties that are tolerant to low temperature.

At the BecA-ILRI Hub, he is using the high-throughput genotyping facility to perform allelic diversity survey among cold tolerant varieties. Negussie is working in association with Dr. Jagger Harvey and Bramwell Wanjala. His work will be useful for the marker assisted breeding program of the STRASA project and for the development of cold tolerant rice for Africa.