Principal Scientist
Damaris Odeny is a plant molecular breeder with research experience in Africa, Asia, Europe and USA. She has led and implemented genomics projects in both cereals and legumes, including the development of genomic resources in several orphan crops. Damaris works closely with other disciplines from national, private and international institutes to develop cutting-edge genomic resources for all ICRISAT mandate crops (sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, groundnut, chickpea and pigeonpea) in her current global role. Prior to this, she worked as a senior researcher at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), South Africa, where she played a key role in establishing molecular breeding processes for indigenous vegetables. Damaris is also passionate about mentoring of young upcoming scientists and has successfully mentored more than 50 scientists in her career to date.
Damaris earned her PhD in Plant Genetics (2006) from the University of Bonn (Germany) and completed a post-doctoral training from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in 2009 in Cologne, Germany.
Areas of expertise: Qualitative and quantitative genetics; Genetic mapping; Pre-breeding; Plant genetic engineering; Mutation breeding; Statistical genomics; High throughput genotyping and marker development; Next-Generation Sequencing and data analysis; Transcriptome analysis; Metagenomics
Publications
- Sorghum Pan-Genome Explores the Functional Utility for Genomic-Assisted Breeding to Accelerate the Genetic Gain
on June 4, 2021 at 8:19 am
- Novel sources of resistance to blast disease in finger millet
on March 29, 2021 at 10:49 am
- Novel sources of drought tolerance from landraces and wild sorghum relatives
on March 24, 2021 at 4:38 am
- Modeling Illustrates That Genomic Selection Provides New Opportunities for Intercrop Breeding
on March 7, 2021 at 4:00 pm
- From bits to bites: Advancement of the Germinate platform to support prebreeding informatics for crop wild relatives
on August 29, 2020 at 4:38 pm