Alex Hafner: IPREFER 2020 Integrated Plant Systems – Undergraduate Research Experience Presentation

Our 2020 Integrated Plant Systems – Undergraduate Research Experience Fellow Alex Hafner (Illinois State University) presents his work on pennycress genetics and breeding at CoverCress, Inc. at the IPREFER annual meeting.

Alex’s internship project, mentored by IPREFER collaborator Chris Aulbach, involved identifying genes that control flowering time in pennycress and building CRISPR constructs to produce knockout or reduced function mutations. By doing this Alex hopes to accelerate the shift from vegetative to floral development even during short days.

IPREFER is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant No. 2019-69012-29851 from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture