At CenGen we love to share our science and what we do with others – be it in a formal, academic journal or in an informal setting with the general public as audience. On 28 November, the staff from Sensako’s Research Station at Napier visited our laboratory. Their expertise is in field trial and glasshouse management, as well as doubled haploid development and making wheat crosses. Over the years we have come to know each other well since several of our mapping- and gene cloning mutant populations have been grown in their glasshouses, our Crown Rot project trial was planted in their field this year, and also because of our involvement with their wheat breeding programme through our molecular service laboratory (MSL). We therefore visit their premises often and now had the opportunity to show them how the samples that they send to us are processed and analysed and how it ultimately impacts their breeding programme and cultivar development. It was a most enjoyable morning with lots of questions, amazement at our robotics, comments on the tiny volumes that we work with and appreciation for (and identification with) the record keeping that goes along with running a successful laboratory. The consensus afterwards was that they now have a better understanding of what happens to their leaf samples at CenGen and that they can see how our work complements theirs to work together towards creating better wheat.
