Marina Millan-Blanquez

Postgraduate Researcher Designing Future Wheat
Marina Millan-Blanquez

Marina is a PhD student working in the Cristóbal Uauy lab.

Marina’s research project focuses on understanding the genetic processes controlling stigma survival and receptivity in bread wheat. To do this Marina is applying a combination of approaches, all the way from field trials and microscopy work to machine learning and transcriptomics.

The aim of the work is to prolong the longevity of the stigma to enhance the effectiveness of hybrid wheat breeding programmes. This project is in collaboration with KWS and SYNGENTA as well as with the University of Nottingham and University of Adelaide.

Before starting her PhD project, Marina was a visiting student in the lab as part of her Erasmus+ Traineeship Program where she worked on grain size and yield in wheat under the supervision of Dr. Jemima Brinton. Her aim was to characterise the role of different genes in organ development.

Previously to that, she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Genetics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain).