People
Staff
Valerio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Science. He holds a research and teaching appointment in plant breeding and genetics at McGill University.
Education
Ph.D., Plant Breeding, Genetics and Biotechnology. Michigan State University (2015)
M.S., Crop Physiology, University of Missouri (2011)
B.S., Agronomy, Universidad de Caldas, Colombia (2008)
Active Affiliations
Executive Leadership Board: North American Plant Phenotyping Network
Education Committee: National Association of Plant Breeders
Technical Editor: Crop Science; The Plant Phenome Journal.
Associate Editor: Frontiers in Plant Science - Plant Breeding Section; Journal of Plant Registrations; New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research; The Crop Journal.
Adjunct Lecturer, Lincoln University. Lincoln, New Zealand.
Shamus McGuire
Shamus is our field technician in charge of breeding and phenomics operations. He is a McGill graduate in Bioresource Engineering.
Postdoctoral FELLOWS
Dr. Kritarth Seth
Dr. Seth is affiliated with AgResearch (New Zealand), Lincoln University (New Zealand) and McGill University. He is working on developing high-throughput phenotyping of biological nitrogen fixation.
Graduate RESEARCHERS
Jérôme Gélinas Bélanger
Jérôme is a PhD student working on: Soybean flowering GWAS and gene editing.
Jérôme is co-supervised with Dr. Louise O'Donoughue at CEROM.
Henry Cordoba
Henry is a PhD student working on:
Genomewide association of dry beans for quality traits
The impact of deleterious mutations in self pollinated species
Laura Esquivel
Laura is a MS student working on:
Canadian Sclerotinia Initiative
Genomics of white mold disease resistance in common bean
Isabella Chiaravalotti
Isabella is a MS student working on:
Optimization of genomic selection strategies using machine learning methods.
Deep tissue phenomics methods for plant breeding applications.
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHERS
Simon Poirier
Stomatal regulation
Robbie Brooks
Yield trials
Marysia Zaleski-Cox
KASP Marker Validation
Sarah Christinck
Yield trials
Lab Alumni
Technicians
Postdocs
Amir Ghoddoucy
Kifah Gharzeddin
Graduate RESEARCHERS
Jennifer Lin - 2022 (MS)
Current position: Medical illustrator
Thesis title: The simulation of plant breeding scenarios in the common bean Phaseolus vulgaris L.
Lucy Egan - 2020 (PhD)
Current position: Postdoc at CSIRO in NSW, Australia
Co-supervised with Dr. Rainer Hofmann at Lincoln University (New Zealand).
Dissertation title: Germplasm exploration and phenotyping in Trifolium species for the improvement of agronomic traits and abiotic stress tolerance
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHERS
Yifan Ding
AI models for genomic selection in beans
Marianne Beaulieu
NIRs and protein in Chickpeas
Andrea Corkal (USRA)
Characterizing anthracnose races in Quebec
Camille Jones
White mold tolerance screening