The Molecular Tree Breeding Lab

Exploring the Molecular Tree World

The Molecular Tree Breeding Lab (MTBL) located in the central campus at North Carolina State University (NCSU), is both a research lab and fee-based service lab of the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. The primary mission of the MTBL is to understand how genetic information is encoded in trees and how it controls relevant environmental and economic traits. We explore this fundamental issue by combining phenotypic, physiological and molecular data.

Projects in the lab are cross-disciplinary offering a link between academia and industry and translating our findings into solutions for tree growers and stakeholders. This provides a nourishing research environment to undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. We also provide experimental, and data analysis support to members in different Departments in and out of our institution.

The MTBL also performs state of the art research in the application of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies and biotechnology to address questions related to breeding, plant conservation, functional genomics,Genotype-by-Environment Interaction, and chromatin structure. Through these studies we aim to develop different strategies and tools for the Agritech and conservation sectors to improve productivity, and to understand and identify key factors of natural plasticity and adaptability.

We are curious scientists who welcome collaborations on projects in a broad range of plant biology topics with a strong focus on genomics and biotechnology.

Our Research Includes:

Next Generation Genome Annotation
Genotyping for Balsam Woolly Adelgid Tolerance
NGS Technologies in Tree Improvement and Conservation Genetics of Dipteryx oleifera Benth.
Post-harvest Needle Abscission in Fir species