The Plant Breeding Journey
Thank you for visiting my page! Since you are here, I would like to share with you a short story about how I became interested in Plant Breeding and Genetics.
Going back a few years, when I was an undergraduate student, one day I was studying in the library and while browsing through the bookshelves, a book caught my attention. It was the "DNA: The secret of life", by James D. Watson. Many things on that book were obscure for me at that time, but since the first moment I opened it, I noticed that something important was being reported. At that point, I had already taken courses on genetics, but I had never stopped to think about how behind every piece of knowledge we have in this area, there were great researchers that designed elegant experiments out of curiosity and will to learn more. After reading that book, besides the courses I was taking in my undergraduate program, I started to study genetics by myself. At that time, there were not many opportunities for undergraduate research in genetics in my campus, but to get started on research, I began working on a project focused on soil fertility. I enjoyed my work on the project as an undergraduate resercher, but as I was moving forward with my independent studies with genetics, I knew that I should shift my focus.
One year after that first encounter, in 2012 I was awarded a scholarship to study abroad at the University of Alberta in Canada. I was excited because that was my chance to live in a different culture, interact with people from other countries and experience life in a new perspective. It was also an opportunity to attend great classes in genetics and agronomy. Following the two semesters of studies at the university, I had the chance to do an internship for four months at DuPont Pioneer with canola breeding, also in Canada. That experience probably defined who I am today professionally because I could participate in the process of cultivar development in the breeding program and see the importance of genetics in the process.
After coming back to Brazil in the end of 2013, I was hired as an English teacher in a language school. For one year, I was teaching several classes from beginners to intermediate levels. This experience was fundamental to develop proficiency in English and to have the responsibility of conducting activities in a classroom environment. When I was still working as a teacher in 2014, I began another internship, this time at Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), working with sweet sorghum breeding. I was there for seven months and I could see a different perspective of the breeding process, this time with a different crop and in a public institution.
After obtaining my degree in Agricultural Engineering in the end of 2014, I took some time to think about which path I would take for my life. I decided to begin a breeding effort as an independent researcher with one of my professors from my undergraduate program. As I had some experience working with canola, and this crop is not present in my home state, we had the idea of testing some varieties and make selections too see if there was a potential. We had some trials done and we started to select some genotypes, but soon I figured out that despite the internships, my knowledge on plant breeding was very limited to actually make progress with the selections. After that, we put the project on hold, and I decided to study plant breeding in graduate school.
In 2016 I began my MSc at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. There I worked on the development of food-type soybean, where besides studying the genetic control of several traits, I made selections of new lines suitable for human consumption and high yields. In addition to my main project, I learned important concepts in the courses I took, but the ones that had a greater impact in my decision on the PhD choice were Bioinformatics and Computational Tools Applied to Genomics. These courses developed in me an interest to study the genomic foundation of the traits I was evaluating in the breeding program.
After going through the experiences mentioned before and having the time to improve my understanding of plant breeding and genetics, I have decided to pursue my PhD studies at the University of Georgia, studying the genetic control of seed composition and disease resistance in soybeans. You can learn more about my research here.
Currently, I am a Postdoctoral researcher at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology where I work on the assembly of reference genomes and the domestication of new crops.
EDUCATION:
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Souza R, Buckley B, Rouf Mian MA, Li Z. Mining exotic germplasm for genetic improvement of protein quantity and quality in Soybean (Glycine max). Plant Breeding, 1-13, 2024. doi.org/10.1111/pbr.13165.
Souza R, Rouf Mian MA, Vaughn JN, Li Z. Introgression of a Danbaekkong high-protein allele across different genetic backgrounds in soybean. Frontiers in Plant Science, v14, 2023. doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1308731.
Nair RM, Boddepalli VN, Yan MR, Kumar V, Gill B, Pan RS, Wang C, Hartman GL, Silva e Souza R, Somta P. Global Status of Vegetable Soybean. Plants. 12(3):609, 2023 doi.org/10.3390/plants12030609.
Silva e Souza, R; Barbosa, PAM; Yassue, RM; et al. Combining ability for the improvement of vegetable soybean. Agronomy Journal, v. 112, 2020. doi.org/10.1002/agj2.20322.
Espolador, FG; Yassue, RM; Morosini, JS; Bornhofen, E; Barbosa, PAM; Souza, RS; Vello, NA. Assessing tolerance to Asian soybean rust in soybean inbred lines from exotic and adapted crosses. Euphytica, v. 216, 2020. doi.org/10.1007/s10681-020-02597-8.
Ostezan, A; McDonald, SC; Tran, DT; Silva e Souza, R; Li, Z. Target region sequencing and applications in plants. J. Crop Sci. Biotech. 2020. doi.org/10.1007/s12892-020-00056-3.
Yassue, RM; Bornhofen, E; Espolador, FG; Barbosa, PAM; Souza, RS; Vello, NA. Uni and multivariate approaches for diallel analysis in early generation trials for soybean tolerance to rust. Bragantia, v. 78, p. 522-534, 2019. doi.org/10.1590/1678-4499.20190037 .
Yassue, RM; Franciscon, H; Tsutsumi, CY; Egewarth, VA; Egewarth, JF; Achre, D; Ferreira, SD; Souza, RS; et al. Adaptability and stability of wheat cultivars sown on different dates in West Paraná. African Journal of Agricultural Research, v. 12(5), p 342-347, 2017.doi.org/10.5897/AJAR2016.11693.
Souza, RS; Parrella, RAC; Souza, VF; Parrella, NNLD. Maturation curves of sweet sorghum genotypes. Ciência e Agrotecnologia, v. 40, p. 46-56, 2016.doi.org/10.1590/S1413-70542016000100004.
SCIENCE COMMUNICATION:
Here you will find some videos explaining a little bit more about plant breeding.