PhD Students
PhD Student
B2/R3288-WS15
Yasha Zhang is interested in date palm research programs. Her research objective is to support the establishment of a tissue culture and transformation platform that can be used to introduce genes like morphogenic regulators to accelerate date palm growth and reduce the regeneration time. Obtaining palms from a homogenous tissue culture will allow them to preserve pure lines and improve elite cultivars. Having a stable transformation protocol, reducing the generation time, and developing methods for rapid sex determination provide the first steps toward establishing date palm breeding in the Kingdom. This knowledge from the date palm can be transferred to other crops, which will also contribute to improving other desert agriculture efforts.