Field Day 2026, August, 2026.
This year's field day looked a little different than most years. We were very grateful to be hosted in Waskish, MN this year, where the wild rice was looking lush! Talks were given talking about the progression of the most promising germplasm, genetic work being done and disease management. Then, it was off to the paddies, where we got to see the differences between varieties in one of our advanced variety trials and see the successful growth of one of our top contenders for the next likely wild rice variety. As usual, we had a great time talking with everyone and sharing how things are going in the program!
Maybell Passes Her Defense! May, 2026.
Maybell presented her research and passed her graduate school defense! She spoke about her transcriptome study where she looked at gene expression across many different wild rice tissues. She also has a paper coming out on the topic soon, so keep an eye out for that. We are all very proud of Maybell and are excited to hear what she does next!
Kat Gives her Seminar, March, 2026
Our graduate student Kat gave her seminar this week entitled "Mapping Wild Rice: Genetics and Sociocultural Contexts of Zizania palustris". She did a great job of outlining the goals of her research as well as providing the department with important contextual information about the research. We are very proud of her!
Derek does a PhD Rotation with the Program, February, 2026.
Derek Hunsaker is joining the program for a few weeks as part of his PhD rotation! We are excited to have him here to help with some of our more computationally heavy tasks. He will be working on determining diplotype effects on shattering in wild rice based on our GWAS data. Welcome Derek!