Dr. Nirosha L. Karunarathna and M.Sc. Nathaly Maldonado received the GPZ grant to attend the International Symposium of the Society for Plant Breeding (GPZ) in Tulln, Austria (February 11-13, 2020).
“The Symposium will remain as a notable event of the training for my scientific career. The presentations were remarkable and the discussions were a splendid learning experience. Although I learned from all contributions covering a broad range of topics, I enjoyed the most presentations about practical breeding and field experiments. The technology advances for phenotyping fully impressed me and it is something that I pretend to enforce in my home country. Within this topic, I could highlight digital phenotyping to identify breeding targets and enhance crop improvement, as well as its practical applications in wheat and grapevine. Above all, as an early-stage researcher, I had the privilege to share the first results of my work at a high level conference with a global network”.
Nathaly Maldonado, PhD Student
Plant Breeding Institute at Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel
“The conference held in Tulln, Austria 2020, was my second-time participation in GPZ main symposia. I had no doubt that the conference would be a remarkable place to learn from expertise researchers. GPZ symposium in Tulln was highly inspiring, and I enjoyed all the talks and poster presentations. It was a meeting point for early phase scientists to discuss and learn from senior scientists. I was impressed by how scientists take advantage of new technologies and how they apply them to improve plant breeding and crop production. I appreciate the financial support given by GPZ to attend this conference, which gave me the opportunity to share my Ph.D. research work with other scientists.”
Dr. Nirosha L. Karunarathna, Postdoctoral researcher
Plant Breeding Institute at Christian Albrechts Universität zu Kiel
