Hi Yousef Rahimi!

What are you doing in the project?  

I am studying phenotypic and genetic diversity among populations of hexaploid timothy (Phleum pratense L.) and its two presumed parental species named P. nodosum (2n=2x=14) and P. alpinum (2n=4x=28) in a genebank collection of 250 accessions comprising wild populations and landraces (collected from Northern Europe), cultivars and breeding lines from NordGen and 266 breeding lines and cultivars from the company Lantmännen. The aim is to initially understand potential variation in agronomic traits in mentioned collections, then to identify loci controlling important traits such as dry matter production, and finally use the obtained phenotypic and genomic knowledge to start developing genomic selection models.  
 
Why is the project important? 

Timothy is Sweden's most cultivated forage grass and is therefore of great importance to produce high-quality fodder for livestock as well as pets. Despite the rapid climate change, we need to develop new and more efficient breeding methods to enable Swedish agriculture to maintain a high level of security for forage grass production.  
  
What did you do before you started your PhD? 

I did a Master's program in Plant Breeding at the University of Tehran, Iran. Then, I joined a project to perform GWAS in Iranian bread wheat collection evaluated under drought conditions at the same university.  
 
Tell about one of your best moment or experience during your PhD studies thus far!    

Even though my PhD study has been full of exciting moments I would say phenotyping plants in the field and then having the opportunity to work on whole-genome resequencing data from a subset of the collection were super exciting moments as I could perceive diversity both at the phenotype and genome level of the plants.  

The interview was conducted in 2022