Varoostha Govender

Varoostha has a BSc (Hons) in Genetics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a MScAgric in Wine Biotechnology from Stellenbosch University. Her research interests include plant molecular genetics and genomics applied to investigating the genetic architecture of complex agronomic traits. She is currently enrolled in a PhD programme at the Department of Genetics at Stellenbosch University. Her PhD research is focused on understanding the genetics underlying phenotypic diversity of fruit quality traits in grapevine. Her project involves implementing classical quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis, complimented by gene expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis and genome assemble for candidate gene discovery and to identify sequence variation underpinning berry aroma and bunch morphology traits.