My stellar MSc student John Hubensky fabulously defended his thesis! 🎉
His research taught us about TPPs & their role in drought tolerance, & genetics of spike development.

Thanks @NSERC_CRSNG @SaskWheat @mb_cropalliance for the funding & @westerngrains for scholarship to John.

We present first ever haplophased genome of barley stripe rust + an evidence for likely somatic hybridization event in Psh. Interestingly, Psh isn't much different from Pst & the difference is similar to what we find b/w two diverse Pst lineages+we found genes that makes Psh, Psh & not Pst. 3/5

My intuition from my MSc stripe rust work & what I hypothesized in 2018 - here we proved that I was right:
PstS18 - the most predominant stripe rust lineage in North America-is a somatic hybrid of PstS1 (former most predominant lineage that was introduced from east Africa around year 2000). 2/5