Following her emergence as the 2022 winner of the prestigious Illumina Agricultural Greater Good Initiative Grant, IITA Molecular Geneticist Ranjana Bhattacharjee and her team are receiving support for research in yam sequencing data. Yam is considered an orphan crop and is a staple in Nigeria and some parts of Africa.
The grant announcement made on Illumina’s website earlier in the year stated that “Bhattacharjee’s work is helping to address food insecurities of low-income, food-deficit countries in West Africa by breeding yams, a staple of diets in this region”.
The research explores the sequencing of the genes of cultivated and wild yam species to determine the traits that can increase disease resistance and yields of yam. With the target of addressing food insecurity in the sub-Saharan region, Bhattacharjee is also creating a community resource that will contribute to yam breeding research and sustain benefits for future research at IITA.