Gurleen Kaur is a PhD candidate at the University of Florida majoring in Horticultural Sciences and is slated to graduate in December 2022. She wants to work in the private industry in plant breeding after graduation. She works on tomato flavor improvement with Dr. Harry Klee using omics techniques, bioinformatics, and gene editing.
She sat down with Marc Zienkiewicz at the National Association of Plant Breeders annual meeting in Ames, Iowa, last month to talk about her work and the importance of something called the George Washington Carver Scholarship program, of which she is chair.
“Over the years in most of the crops, most plant breeding efforts focused on quantity, or what we call yield. I like tomato flavor improvement as it showcases how important the quality is for the end users, consumers. In our case, the highlight of my work has been identifying tomato lines that are as good as commercial standards for yield and also tastes good to consumers,” she says.
She also has teaching experience as a teaching assistant. She has served in many student organizations, organizing symposiums, field trips, workshops, online journal clubs, and professional development events.
“I believe it’s crucial to get involved in the research community to exchange ideas, thoughts and experiences. It gives you an out of the box experience, and you’ll learn the differences between the theoretical and real life. The top lesson from all my experiences is to learn critical thinking and find solutions.”
