Valentina Ivanova

Position: Laboratory manager, Department Vegetable Breeding, CPSBB

Ms. Ivanova’s interest in plants arose from the time spent at her family-owned farm and she always had one foot in agriculture and the other in sciences. She obtained a Master’s degree in Plant protection and has previously worked as an intern at the Department of Genetics, Plant Breeding and Biotechnology at WPUT (Poland). There she focused on identification of novel dwarfing genes and QTL mapping in rye (Secale cereale L.). Her current lab at the Vegetable Breeding Department is proactively involved in the establishment of germplasm collection, the assessment of resistance to biotic and abiotic stress factors as well as the identification and exploitation of the most promising candidates via marker-assisted selection. As part of the RESIST project Ms. Ivanova is focused on elucidating the mechanisms of action of different seaweed-based biostimulants which can be employed to enhance crop quality and abiotic stress tolerance. Her work relies heavily on the combined use of multi-trait high-throughput phenotyping and -omic technologies that are capable of detecting changes in the plant’s physiology and modulation of gene expression. As part of the team at BioAtlantis she is glad to translate new scientific understanding to its potential application in crop science.