Agricultural researcher Awais Khan is now leading efforts to find new ways to breed disease-resistant apples, after growing up in a small town and working in six crops on five continents.
Khan, currently an associate professor at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science, explains that in his research group, they are characterizing the genetics of disease resistance in apples, as a way to develop varieties with improved resistance. and methods for sustainably managing diseases in apple orchards.
“We are developing new methods including rapid-cycle breeding, genome editing and marker-assisted breeding to overcome some of these obstacles and accelerate the targeted breeding of high-quality disease-resistant cultivars,” he says, adding that even today, the selection of disease-resistant cultivars and good quality fruit from woody perennial crops, such as apple, is particularly time-consuming, laborious and expensive.
“We are characterizing disease resistance mechanisms using quantitative genetics, genomics, transcriptomics and bioinformatics; develop high-throughput methods for plant resistance phenotyping; let’s develop DNA markers for marker-assisted breeding and develop disease-resistant screening lines,” says Khan, adding that he has always been interested in how scientific research translates into real-life situations in the field.
“My goal has always been to bring the knowledge gained in these leading institutions to poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture,” he says.
From jute rugs to genetic maps
Khan says he was born in a small village called Tahlian in Pallandri, Azad Kashmir (the Pakistani-administered part of the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir) and came from a modest financial background.
“I think my personal experience gives me a unique perspective on being from the Global South and contributing to international agriculture,” Khan says, adding that his primary education was at a “taat school,” where students were sitting on a jute mat. (taat) in the field and he also helped his parents in farming and raising cattle.
He was able to enter an agricultural university at the suggestion of a friend and completed his undergraduate degree in science in Azad Kashmir and was admitted to the University of Gottingen, Germany for a master’s degree in international agriculture.
Since then, Khan’s research career has taken him to some of the world’s leading research institutions, including ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, the University of York in the UK, the University of Illinois in the United States and the International Potato Center (CIP).
Khan says the challenges for food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture have a very serious impact and are complex to manage, especially in the Global South due to large populations, hidden chronic hunger, limited availability agricultural land and climate change.
“It will be impossible to achieve the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), especially SDGs 2 (Zero Hunger), 1 (No Poverty) and 10 (Reduced Inequalities), unless scientists in countries of the South are actively developing sustainable solutions to their local food security problems,” he says.
Catalina Salgado-Salazar is another Southern scientist working to protect a popular fruit.
She is helping develop a genetic test to identify a fungus that causes a disease that has already plagued Asian mango industries and could threaten crops in the United States and Colombia.