Fanna Maina: Plant Direct First Author

Fanna Maina, first author of “Genome-wide association studies identify putative pleiotropic locus mediating drought tolerance in sorghum”

Current Position: Crop Geneticist/Research Scientist at the National Institute of Agronomic Research of Niger INRAN (Niger Republic)

Education: Ph.D. in Agronomy (Plant breeding and genetics)

Non-scientific Interests: Cooking, Reading, Traveling, Hiking

Brief bio: Fanna Maina was born and raised in Niger Republic (West Africa). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Blida in Algeria, a master’s degree in Biodiversity from the University of Maradi in Niger, and a Ph.D. in Plant breeding and genetics from Kansas State University. Her Ph.D program was funded by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum and Millet mentored by Dr. Geoffrey Morris. After graduation, Fanna returned to her home country where she is working at the National Institute of Agronomic Research of Niger. Fanna’s research was inspired by her experience in her home country of Niger, where subsistence agriculture is threatened by many stressors, which causes food insecurity. Her research focuses on genomic approaches to understand genetic architecture underlying local adaptation and develop genomic tools to accelerate breeding for locally adapted and tolerant varieties in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is involved in several projects related to crop genomics and breeding.