Rahel Berhe

Addis Ababa University / Crop Genomics

Advisor: Prof. Dejene Bekele

Rahel Berhe characterises the genomic diversity and population structure of Ethiopia's most important dryland cereals — teff (Eragrostis tef) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) — using a 50K SNP diversity panel at Addis Ababa University's College of Natural Sciences, supervised by Prof. Dejene Bekele. Both crops are critical for food security across the Ethiopian highlands and lowlands respectively, and Ethiopia's exceptional landraces — the Ethiopian teff gene pool represents ~95% of global diversity — remain vastly underexploited in formal breeding because their genomic architecture is poorly characterised. Rahel has genotyped 640 accessions from the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute genebank across both species, performed population structure analysis identifying seven and five genomic subgroups respectively, and mapped linkage disequilibrium decay to inform marker density requirements for genome-wide association studies. Her GWAS for 100-day drought tolerance in sorghum under managed-stress field conditions has mapped three novel QTLs on chromosomes 2, 5, and 9 that collectively explain 28% of phenotypic variance. A formal collaboration with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research integrates her genomic data into the national sorghum improvement programme, and she is in advanced discussions with two East African seed companies about genomic prediction service agreements.