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Tag: grain quality

Natalia Palacios Rojas

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Natalia Palacios’s main area of work is the development of maize germplasm with high nutritional quality, including high quality protein maize, high zinc and high provitamin A maize, the evaluation of nutritional and processing quality of maize under different production systems and the characterization of maize for end-use quality. She has also recently become involved in the safety of maize kernels by evaluating different strategies for aflatoxin control. Her research also includes the development of food processing methods to increase health and nutrition benefits for consumers.

Palacios has worked as a Quality Specialist at CIMMYT since 2005. She studied Microbiology at Andes University in Bogota, Colombia, and completed her doctoral studies in Plant Biology at the University of East Anglia and the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England. She later completed two postdoctoral placements at the University of Dublin, Ireland, and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Germany.

Karim Ammar

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Karim Ammar is a principal scientist and head of durum wheat and triticale breeding at CIMMYT. He conducts a globally-focused, extensive and proactive breeding effort to produce improved germplasm of high value and relevance to collaborators worldwide.

Durum wheat profitability requires sustained gains in genetic yield potential, adaptation to a wide range of water availability and temperature conditions, durable genetic protection against major pathogens and quality attributes that allow harvests to be marketed readily.

In addition, Ammar is involved in research that widens the genetic bases of resistance to rusts and septoria diseases, develops molecular tools to select more durable resistance, enhances breeding capacity for effective drought and heat tolerance, and to diversify quality characteristics of durum wheat grain. He also focuses on improving and promoting triticale as an input saving, low production cost feed and forage option in livestock-cereals operations.